


Fighting Nature

by cynsh



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mystery, Organized Crime, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 63,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25863403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynsh/pseuds/cynsh
Summary: "They teach you in school that our ancestors who fought day and night were some kind of lesser beings to us now. It’s all bullshit. Fighting is what weareas pokémon. Taking it away is like taking away our ability to speak, or mate. It’s just pokémon nowadays don’t realise that."Many generations have passed since all forms of fighting were banned in the pokémon city of Deepden. Now the city is flourishing – but for two pokémon at the bottom of the work ladder, life isn't so rosy. And so, when an opportunity presents itself, they take a chance and begin an illegal, underground fighting club, unaware that it could alter the very fabric of their society.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. The Spark

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks for checking out my story! I'll briefly give a bit more background here into what Fighting Nature is about.
> 
> This story is about pokémon, and pokémon only. Most stories of that kind are tagged under 'PMD', but I'm hesitant to make that association here, as very little about this story - the setting, the plot, to name two - is similar to those that are PMD-based. Nevertheless, if you like reading about pokémon doing stuff rather than, say, human trainers, maybe this story is for you!
> 
> Huge thank you to my wonderful beta-readers and friends: Shadow of Antioch, Talgoran, and Will1231. There's still a long way to go in writing this story, but it feels like a significant achievement just to get it out here. There's no way I would have made it this far without the help of these three. Also, thanks to AarowTheBlacksmith for making the wonderful cover art. You can find him on deviantart under the same name.
> 
> Finally, as always, I cherish any feedback readers give on my work! Even if it's just 'good story, pls update', or (hopefully not) 'bad story, pls abandon', I'd love to hear your thoughts.

* * *

There were few sounds Raskin could imagine that were as dissonant and demonic as his alarm.

That, of course, was why it was exactly what he needed. Less focus on the tiresomeness of weekday existence, more focus on silencing the damned sound before he broke his clock.

The nickit slid out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen-living room, reaching up with his hind legs to flick on the light. He paused. He wasn't usually the first up on a weekday—Sid's job at the greenhouse started at 8 o'clock, and it was half-past seven now. Sid should have been about to leave at this time, but Raskin saw no sign that he had moved; there were no crumbs on the kitchen table, the daily newspaper lay untouched at their doorstep, and Sid's bedroom door was closed.

"Sid?" Raskin called cautiously. The walls in the apartment were thin, so they could hear each other from practically anywhere. It also meant that any social gathering directly above or below them was like a radio broadcast, but those were fortunately rare on a weekday.

Raskin heard a brief scuffling from behind Sid's door. Then the quilava burst out, eyes bleary yet wide-open at once.

"Stupid alarm," he muttered, grabbing two pieces of bread from their counter and immediately stuffing one into his mouth. "That's the second time this week now. Must be broken."

Raskin frowned. Alarm clocks cost more than they should. "Let's have a look at it later," he suggested. "Might just be something jammed in the circuitry."

"Don't pretend you know how a clock works," Sid quipped. Though he looked like he might say something more, he had to keep chewing his bread. He hurriedly washed it down with a glass of water. When he finished, he hesitated over the kitchen tap.

"Don't do it, Sid," Raskin said—but by the time he had spoken, it was too late. Sid thrust his head under the cold tap and turned it onto full blast. He squealed. A second later his head reemerged, dripping wet. He shook himself like a meowth in the rain.

Raskin winced. "Why do you do this to yourself? That must be so painful…"

"That's exactly why I do it," Sid said breezily, stuffing a water flask into his rucksack and heading to the door. "Right, see ya later. Make sure you're around to let me in this evening, yeah?"

"You mean you still haven't found your key-?"

The door slammed before he could finish. _I guess not._

With a sigh, Raskin rose up onto his hind legs to compose his own breakfast: a bowl of _Rice Snaps_ with milk and pinap juice. He shovelled the food down with practised efficiency, then put the remains in the sink for later.

He showered quickly, dried himself even quicker, then, noticing that his wet tail had been dripping copiously on the floor, gave it a quick trimming with his electric razor. It had taken some time to get used to doing this, but he had it down to a fine art now. He sat in front of the mirror, with his tail curled around his body, then used one paw to pin down the point he wanted to trim to. This was usually where the first streaks of black started coming through its orange fur—the black fur always grew thicker for some reason, and tended to droop on the ground, gathering dust. From there, Raskin just had to keep his paw holding the razor steady.

He wondered how his nickit ancestors had ever managed with their bushy, uncut tails. Even if they were useful for brushing the ground to cover one's tracks, they must have been so heavy, so unwieldy. _Thank the gods for razors._

With that done, he grabbed his wallet and keys from his room and stuffed them in his bag. He sat up, using his front paws to fasten the bag's single clip around his stomach, with its contents held tightly to his side to prevent it bouncing around when he walked on all-fours. Raskin was adept enough at moving on two feet, as were most quadruped 'mon in Deepden, which owed to the bipedal training they received almost straight from hatching. Still, all-fours remained more comfortable.

He checked the clock again—he'd left just enough time—glanced very briefly in the mirror, finding his fur in reasonable order, then left. He started locking their door but, remembering Sid's lack of a key, decided against it. The crime rate around his district was non-existent right now. Besides, even if someone _did_ notice their apartment door was unlocked, there was scarcely a thing worth stealing. Most of their possessions were already second-hand or beaten down with use.

The first thing he saw upon leaving his apartment was a familiar skitty across the street, who caught his eye at once. Raskin groaned inwardly.

"Raskin! Fancy seeing you here!" she said, cheerfully trotting over. Like him, she wore a small bag clipped around her middle.

Raskin forced a smile. "Morning, Locki." She was a new face at work, and their manager had chosen Raskin to help show her the ropes for the first couple of weeks. Having gotten to know the skitty fairly well, Raskin was sure that the manager had done it purely to irritate him.

"Hey, since we're here, fancy running to work together?" Locki asked. "I was just about to set off."

"Oh, I usually catch a ride," Raskin explained, silently breathing a sigh of relief that she wasn't joining him.

"Oh," Locki said. "Is… there any reason why you don't run?"

Raskin shrugged. "Not really. Just not for me." It was a half-truth.

"Well, it's a really nice route through the park. You should try it sometime!" Locki chirped. "See you at work!" With that, she turned and galloped happily away.

Why would any 'mon run such long distances, Raskin wondered, to places they could get a ride to for barely a poké? The mundaneness of work was bad enough as it was; he didn't want to be in pain before he even arrived.

Harmony Square's transport stop was a short walk away. He trudged down the pavement, past various food stalls and the postal service, sidestepping and squeezing past bigger pokémon that were in his way. On a good morning, sunlight would light up the dull brick buildings and the streets surrounding it, but today, like most, it was covered by clouds, setting a grey tinge on everything.

Two services operated at transport stops: the more common and cheaper option was the ground rides, which consisted of large-backed quadruped pokémon—mudsdale and arcanine were the ones Raskin saw most—who arrived every few minutes at the stop, going in a loop of either the north or south side of town. The other option was air taxis. A few lean flying pokémon were already waiting at the stop, ruffling their wings impatiently. These would take a 'mon straight to anywhere in the city they pleased, much quicker than the predestined routes the ground rides followed. The downside was mostly the extortionate price. It would also be freezing in the wrong weather, Raskin imagined, though the air was pleasantly warm today.

Even as Raskin waited at the stop, an expertly groomed grovyle with an elaborately patterned scarf strolled up and spoke with a waiting staravia. After dropping a few coins into the pouch around the flyer's neck, the grovyle climbed onto its back and soared away, rising above most of the surrounding apartment blocks and businesses in just a couple of wing beats.

 _Rich show-off,_ Raskin thought.

By the time three arcanine and a tropius arrived moments later—the rides travelled in packs, with their exact numbers varying depending on how busy the time—there were more pokémon waiting with Raskin than he was used to. He had to squeeze up tightly between two passengers on the arcanine's back, and once they set off he found the tail of a minccino uncomfortably close to his face.

Raskin huffed, trying to take his mind off the discomfort. His first thought was of how much low-brow banter Locki would give him once he arrived at work, then of what basic computer function she would forget today. Determined to fight that nightmare off, he mused over a logic puzzle that had been frustrating him the previous night. _If four machamp can chop down four trees in four seconds, how many can twelve machamp chop down in twelve seconds?_ He wouldn't check the answer until he was certain he had it right; and it _definitely_ couldn't be twelve.

At least one benefit of the rides were that they stopped practically on the doorstep of _Pokémon Bank_ , his workplace. One of several throughout the city that were government-owned, the name gave a pretty good reflection of how interesting a place it was. He stepped between the stone columns marking the bank's entrance, paws clicking lightly on the marble floor. Whichever president had been in charge of designing these government buildings had an obvious liking for old-fashioned design.

After signing in, Raskin headed to the offices on the top floor. It was an open room, filled with desks where the dozen-or-so pokémon that shared this department worked. The twin skyscrapers of paper he had left on his desk over the weekend had not cleared themselves, though at least the whole of his little computer screen was visible for now.

He had only been at work for a few minutes before Locki, who had arrived before him and hid no smugness about it, asked for his help.

"I've got all of this customer's inflows and outflows typed up," she said, which Raskin was glad to confirm, "but—sorry if I'm repeating myself here—how do you easily sum up the totals? I could calculate it by hand, but—"

"Yeah, don't do that," Raskin said, moving his chair over to her desk. "You click and drag—" He had to practically lean on her desk to move the cursor, such was the small reach of his front legs. He highlighted every inflow. _Jeez, I'm glad you_ didn't _try doing it by hand,_ he thought, staring down the huge list. "—then type SUM into the little box that appears here. That's it."

"So…" Locki carefully tried the same procedure on the next column. "Awesome!" she cheered. "Thanks, Raskin!"

"No worries," he muttered, eager to return to his work.

Except… he wasn't eager in the slightest. He knew why this task was important: the bank was transferring its entire, enormous monetary records onto the recently arrived computers. The capabilities and speed of these new machines were mind-boggling to Raskin initially—and even now, after a couple of weeks experience, he struggled to grasp how they were possible. Once all the data could be accessed and processed through these magic electricity boxes, the bank's efficiency would undoubtedly skyrocket.

Yet none of that could shroud the faint, perpetual despair he felt about it all. Before the computers, the bank had calculated everything by hand. It was repetitive, hand-aching work, yes, and it was almost as low-paying as Sid's job on the farm—but it was at least a little _stimulating._ And he was good at maths; better than any of his co-workers, for sure.

Transcribing pages and pages of numbers onto a little screen was just… _nothing_. And once that job was done, as his manager was so keen to point out, _every_ operation could be handled by computer. The bank could run practically paperless. He would be a little input machine.

_I need to get out of here. I'm wasting my life._

He paused typing, and told that thought, very clearly, to stay in the back of his mind where it belonged. He'd only make himself feel worse by lingering on the bad. Besides, he was still young; he would get a break in time. He wasn't sure how, but he would. He had to believe that.

"You thinking of heading to the athletics tonight?" Raskin heard a co-worker ask.

"Sure," replied Luis, a zangoose. "It's the grounded ten thousand metres, right?"

"That's the one. I think it'll be close."

"I hope it's not," Luis said snidely. "That linoone fella's gonna do the business for the commons again. You heard it here first!"

"Nah, I reckon Horus Manectric's got it on lockdown," a kirlia close to Raskin piped up.

"Pfft, you wish." Luis caught Raskin's eye. "Are you gonna go, Rasky?"

Raskin shrugged. "I dunno yet. Maybe."

Athletics was a strange entity to him. It was tremendously popular throughout all of Deepden, and he understood why. There was usually at least one of each pokémon type competing per event, giving everyone someone to cheer on, even if the same types tended to dominate the events suiting them. The throwing events had genuinely astounding feats of strength, while running-focused ones often went right to wire, leaving emotions on a knife-edge between euphoria and despair.

Even so, whenever he watched it, either with Sid or work colleagues, he felt like it was… incomplete, somehow. There was something crucial missing. That, or he just always inexplicably found his eyes drawn to the stewards scattered all around the stands, florescent-jacketed and grim-faced. Whatever it was, he could never get very excited about the athletics.

* * *

An hour or so of aimless keyboard tapping passed. Then, Raskin heard distant noises from the office window, overlooking the street below. The closest 'mon to it poked their heads over. One of them gestured urgently to the rest of the room. "Get a look at this!" she said.

Though Raskin hesitated, nobody else seemed to, so he eventually followed the crowd, leaning his front paws on the window to get a better view, since most of his co-workers were bigger than him.

He arrived just in time to see a burly raticate shove a distinctly lighter-looking ivysaur to the floor on the street below. A crowd was quickly gathering around them.

"Setting up business right opposite my bakery is bad enough," the raticate growled, stomping towards the 'mon, "yet you have the nerve to raid my ingredients too?!"

"Raid your—what?" the ivysaur yelped, vines held out in front of him like a peace gesture. "You are mistaken, sir. My business runs on a firm set of morals, and I would never—"

"Don't you lie to me!" The raticate suddenly swiped a set of claws at one vine, which the Ivysaur only pulled away by a whisker. The crowd around them gasped. In response, the Ivysaur dropped a little closer to the ground and widened his posture. He suddenly looked like a different pokémon; one ready to fight back.

Raskin frowned. Why was no one trying to intervene here? This raticate had some pounds on him, sure, but he was far from _unstoppable—_ there were more than enough bodies gathered around that could get in his way.

"D'you reckon we'll get a street fight?" a scraggy asked, her head pressed against the window.

"I hope so," Luis replied, rubbing his paws together. "Been too long since I've seen a good one."

 _Oh… so nobody_ wants _to stop them,_ Raskin realised. _Why is that?_

Sure, a fight would be fun to watch—at least, that was what everyone seemed to think—but they had been illegal for years now. And that was before considering how much physical harm fighting could do. _Surely, these two won't think that fighting is the best solution…?_

"If you attack me," the ivysaur said, "I won't roll over for you."

"Why don't I put that to the test?" the raticate hissed.

"Y'know, my money _was_ on Raticate," someone at the window said, "but now I'm not so sure."

"I reckon Mister Vines there's got more about him than he lets on," Luis said, grinning.

But the raticate only took one more step forward before a sudden, horizontal blast of water pierced the air, slamming into the tawny 'mon's chest. The raticate stumbled backwards, mouth open in shock, before falling over onto his back.

A huge empoleon stepped out from behind the ivysaur, wearing the white scarf and badge of a police officer. It wiped its mouth with a vast flipper. "Stay right where you are, or you'll get it too," she warned the ivysaur, who unsurprisingly did as she ordered.

The empoleon looked around the gathered crowd dimly. "Show's over, folks. Get back to work. You two." She pointed to the ivysaur, then the raticate, who was slowly coming to. "Come with me."

No one complained as she led them away, for the empoleon had only done the right thing. Still, Raskin could sense the air of deflation around the street even from where he stood.

"That's a shame," Luis said, trudging back to his desk, as if echoing Raskin's thought. "I would've paid to see how that ended." A few co-workers chuckled, agreeing.

As Raskin turned he found Locki, standing resolutely at her desk, staring at the group of them with fury.

"What is wrong with you all?" she demanded. "Fighting is a terrible thing! Don't encourage it!"

The room looked at each other, exchanging confused looks. Eventually Luis spoke up. "You're right, Locks. Sorry."

A few other pokémon murmured their own apologies, and Locki seemed to calm down. As Luis passed Raskin though, he mouthed to him, ' _Her dad's an officer._ '

Raskin understood at once, and had to suppress a smile. Why else would Locki be so vehemently opposed to fighting?

He still found the contrasting reactions of his other co-workers intriguing. _I guess a possible fight is just a distraction more than anything,_ he thought. _Something to interrupt the predictable monotony of everyday life?_

_…Damn, I sound depressing today._

* * *

Raskin passed the two bakeries on the route home from work. Both 'mon were back at their counters, serving customers in the evening rush; the empoleon's attack would have only stunned the raticate, rather than cause any lasting damage. Raskin noticed that both shopkeepers were making an effort not to catch the others' eye, and focused with unnerving concentration on serving customers.

Curious, he went to the ivysaur's shop, as it had a slightly shorter line, and the 'mon seemed significantly less scary. He quickly scanned the glass display for what might be cheap, before the customers cleared.

"Yes?" the ivysaur asked him moments later.

"Small cinnamon roll please," said Raskin. As the 'mon pulled one out for him, he leant over and added, "And um… about what happened in the street earlier…"

The ivysaur paused, narrowing his eyes. "Don't tell me Chaka sent you here?"

 _That must be the raticate,_ Raskin thought, amused. "No, I was just wondering what happened."

"Not much to it," the ivysaur grumbled, putting a paper bag on the counter. "Chaka clearly lost count of his stock, somehow thought I was responsible for it, and won't let it go for some reason. That'll be a half-poké."

Raskin passed him a bronze coin. "Would you really have fought Chaka if the officer hadn't intervened?"

The ivysaur glanced around the shop suddenly and Raskin, realising he may have spoken slightly too loudly, quickly held up a paw of apology. Then, satisfied, the grass 'mon dropped his money into the till and went on. "After the warnings we were given, I might be more careful next time," he said. "But if there had been no police? Why not. It could hit some sense into him."

Raskin thanked him for the roll and left, contemplating his words. Street fights seemed to have a mythical aura attached to them. Though they had been outlawed long before Raskin was born, it didn't stop them occasionally happening. Raskin had never witnessed a proper one, mind: whenever a fight had threatened to break out near him, either some police officer had been in the perfect place to intervene, like today, or the 'mon themselves had realised their foolhardiness and walked away. Plus, for any fights that he _had_ heard about, they never seemed to appear in the newspaper. He suspected that the subsequent eyewitness accounts always became exaggerated as a result.

The combination of talking to the ivysaur and stopping to eat the sweet roll, which was delicious, made him miss his usual ride home, and the next one was running late. The air was significantly colder than it had been this morning. By the time he finally got off the ride and crossed the street to his flat, it was almost seven o'clock, and he felt weary.

The door was still unlocked, so he gave it a firm nudge with his shoulder to open it. The first thing he saw was Sid, stretched out on the sofa, eyes staring upwards at nothing, with a newspaper lying across his torso.

The quilava turned his head at the sound of the door. "Oh, hey Rasky," he said quietly. "You're back a bit late."

"Got caught up with some stuff," replied Raskin, shivering. The warmth of the indoors was most welcome. "How was work?"

"Tiring," Sid mumbled. He put the newspaper down and sat up. "Sorry, you're probably hungry, right? I should've gotten started on dinner already… lost track of time."

"I don't mind waiting a little bit."

"Nah, I should eat too," Sid said, dragging himself over to the kitchen. He peered into the fridge. "Fancy heating up the rest of that stew from the other night?"

"Sounds good," Raskin replied. They had tried following a recipe a few nights ago for a 'herby vegetable stew'. The recipe had served four, but even though they halved all the ingredients, it had been far too much for the two of them. It turned out that it had said 'four _large_ pokémon', which made Raskin even more exasperated. Who decided what size was large?

Raskin took Sid's place on the sofa, stretching and letting out a deep sigh. He pulled the newspaper, _Deepden Daily_ , closer to him while the quilava got to work. The back pages were previewing the athletics that had been the talk of work today. Indeed, it was the talk of most days: events were held several nights a week, and it was rare for the _Coliseum_ to not be pushing its twenty-something thousand capacity.

It would be starting in just over an hour from now. Raskin glanced over at Sid. "Did you want to go watch the 10,000 tonight?"

"Oh? Uh… nah, I don't think so," Sid replied.

Raskin frowned. "Why not?"

"Well…" Sid paused for a moment. "Horus has got it wrapped around her paw, hasn't she?"

The manectric _was_ very good, that was undebatable. Still… "That hasn't stopped you from going before," Raskin said.

Sid shrugged. "Just haven't been feeling it, I dunno."

Perhaps there was some truth in that, Raskin thought. He wouldn't expect even the most ardent fan to watch every night, at least while they had to work too, since the exertion and costs involved would quickly get overwhelming. But even so, Sid's apathy concerned him. The quilava _loved_ sports, as much as anyone he knew.

Sid served up their stew shortly afterwards. Raskin lifted the bowl to his mouth and took a sizable mouthful; it was good, perhaps better than when they had originally cooked it. The vegetables were much tastier than he remembered.

"Something pretty interesting happened at work today. There was a commotion—"

He broke off upon seeing Sid opposite him. The 'mon's head was cradled in his paws, muzzle almost pressing against the table. He had pushed his stew to the side.

This sight was most unusual—Sid was nearly always the one keeping _Raskin's_ spirits high. Raskin felt his heart begin to race. "Sid?" he said carefully. "What's up? Did something happen today?"

Sid breathed heavily. "Nothing in particular," he said, his gaze flitting unsuccessfully between Raskin and the floor. "I just… I'm struggling, Rasky."

"How so? With work, or…?"

"Everything." Sid's voice cracked. "I slave away at this job six days a week. I come home exhausted, I _want_ to go out but I need to save money as well, and keep myself fresh. But the thought of saving myself just for another day of picking berries is… oh, I hate it!"

He got up from the table and began pacing, rubbing his paws up and down his face. "I don't know if I can keep this up, Rasky. I don't wanna spend the rest of my life in a greenhouse, but… what else is there? What can I do?"

 _That's true for both of us_ , Raskin thought sadly. When most pokémon reached the end of compulsory education, they chose a field to specialise in, and got further training from there. But training cost money, the one thing Raskin and Sid had always struggled for. Sid's parents didn't earn much and had raised him among four other children. Although they loved him dearly, and the quilava still visited them regularly, they barely had a quarter-poké of their own to offer. As for Raskin, his parents were in no position to even try funding him.

Raskin got up and patted Sid's arm comfortingly. "I know how you feel," he said. "It's rough. I wish I could do something to help you."

"Same goes for you," Sid said, with a flicker of amusement. He sighed. "You know, sometimes at work, if no one's watching… I go out behind the back of the greenhouse and scream. Just to… release some of this frustration."

Raskin raised an eyebrow. That sounded a little worrying. "Does screaming help you?"

"Yeah, a little."

"Well, you can always do it here, you know. I wouldn't mind."

"Actually, I can't. 'Cause when I properly let off steam, my flame sacs sometimes get ignited. And in this house…"

Raskin glanced around at the wooden table, doors and floor, and he understood. Sid couldn't possibly risk setting the whole apartment block on fire. "Right. Sorry about that."

"Hey, it ain't your fault. I just wish clay fittings weren't so expensive." Sid got down onto all-fours to meet Raskin at eye level, and smiled. "Thanks for being there for me, Rasky. It means a lot, honestly."

"It's nothing," Raskin said, feeling sudden emotion well up in his chest. "I could say the same for you." Unsure what else to do—and feeling too awkward to hug him—Raskin made a tentative smile. "Now, you should get some food down ya. It'll make you feel better."

Sid nodded, sitting back at the table. He took a couple of hearty mouthfuls of stew, and Raskin did the same.

"What was it you were saying about work?" Sid asked. " _Has_ to be more interesting than my day, right?"

Chuckling, Raskin explained the scene with the raticate and ivysaur. Halfway through, Sid had put down his bowl, listening intently.

"Damn, that _is_ unfortunate," he said when Raskin had finished explaining the empoleon's intervention. "That raticate sounded ready to take a few bites out of him."

"I don't doubt that he would have," Raskin said. "I spoke to the ivysaur after work as well. He said that he'd still be willing to fight the 'mon, just to knock some sense into him."

Sid chuckled. "I'd pay to watch that happen."

Hearing the words made Raskin's ears perk. It was the same phrase Luis had used about the two 'mon. "Would you really?" he asked.

"What?"

"Pay to watch a street fight."

Sid eyed him curiously. "Yeah, I think so. I told you about that arrest I saw happen in the south district a couple years ago, right?"

"You've told me a few times."

"It was _awesome_ ," Sid said, a childish excitement in his eyes. "The sneasel was never gonna take down those officers, but he covered practically half the street in ice before they got him under control. I love the athletics, but you just don't see stuff like that happen! So brutal! Raw! I dunno."

Raskin nodded. His mind was racing. "Say, what if we found a way to put on this fight between raticate and ivysaur? We… find somewhere out of the way of police, so they won't intervene. Get a load of people along who wanted to watch, like us. They pay us for it. And as well as money, we get to watch a proper street fight with everyone else."

Sid froze, staring at him. "Where did that come from?"

Raskin laughed, the response unexpected. "My massive brain, obviously. Well, what do you think?"

Sid frowned. "It's a brilliant idea. I bet every 'mon in Deepden would pay for something like that. But it's very illegal, bro. Being involved in a street fight is bad enough, but _staging_ one, charging people to watch like it's some kind of business… what would the punishment even _be_ for that? You'd go to prison, for sure."

That thought made Raskin pause; sent shivers down his spine. He remembered the stories he'd heard about life in the cells, of pokémon that picked fights with every newcomer, pokémon that could crush his little body in the snap of the wrist.

He recalled seeing his father in the visitors room, watching the hope slowly being crushed from him with each successive visit he made. _"No matter what happens,"_ Raskin had said, " _I'll be here for you when you're released. I'll make something of my life. I promise."_

Then Raskin shook his head, clearing the cloud of thoughts. _I_ _can't think about him now. That's out of my control._

"The police won't find out," he told Sid. "Not if we held it somewhere right on the outskirts, where nobody lives. As long as we didn't make a complete catastrophe of the place, I don't think the authorities would notice."

Sid hummed in thought. "Well… I guess Oldden might be okay. Everyone would know where that is. And there's tons of abandoned stuff there... Must be something suitable for hosting a fight."

Raskin smiled. "That sounds perfect." But Sid didn't look so convinced. "What is it?"

Sid rubbed his muzzle. "Oldden's not a nice place, that's all. I've heard it's where all sorts of homeless 'mon gather. What if we're attacked?"

Now Raskin was the one hesitating. He hadn't considered the possibility. If the constant police presence in central Deepden was good for one thing, it made him feel safe. He had no idea how he'd respond to an unprompted attack.

"We'll just have to be careful," he said. "Besides, we'll have each other. If there was anything truly dangerous in Oldden, I'm sure we would have been made aware of it."

"You're probably right," Sid acknowledged. "Another problem, though. Even if the police aren't aware of what we're doing, couldn't someone still go to them about it?"

Raskin considered for a moment. "Unless we invite an undercover officer along, I doubt that'll happen. What I've learnt today is that a lot of pokémon are crying out to see a street fight. They won't want to ruin it." He paused. "How much would you pay to see this fight?"

"Uh… maybe ten poké? Twenty?"

"Twenty might be pushing it. Fifteen sounds reasonable though."

Sid nodded in agreement.

"Then if we got… thirty 'mon to join for this, each paying fifteen each…"

"Wait," Sid interrupted. " _Thirty_? What hat are you pulling these people out of?"

"Well, there's all my co-workers at the bank," Raskin said, counting on his paws. "There's your friends we go to the athletics with. There's the raticate and ivysaur themselves—they probably have friends who'd be just as keen to see this. If we told everyone to spread the word—with caution, obviously, 'cause we don't want it to spread to the cops—I think thirty is a reasonable target."

Sid pressed his paws to his chin. "Which would give us…?"

"450 poké overall. 225 if split between us." Raskin frowned. "225… that felt like it would be more when I was counting the people."

"That's still practically what I earn in a week," Sid said encouragingly. "I'd take it, for sure."

"Good!" Raskin said. "Then… we just need to figure out how we go about this. When's your next day off?"

"Uh… tomorrow, actually. But after that I'm s'posed to be in all week."

"I see. It would be best if we worked on this together, so… well, I could always write in sick tomorrow. Pangoro wouldn't suspect anything."

"You sure?"

Raskin nodded. "I haven't missed a day of work in months. So, the first thing we'd need to do is talk to raticate and ivysaur, to make sure that _they'd_ be willing to do this. It can't work without them."

"Then we need a location," Sid added.

"Right. We can go to Oldden and scout it out. If we find somewhere, then we can start spreading the word around, which should be simple enough. I can catch my workmates once they finish for the day. Where would the athletics gang be tomorrow evening?"

Sid thought for a moment. "Having a drink, most likely. Since there's no athletics on."

"Perfect. You can go to the White Entei and tell them the details—where it's happening, what time…"

"So, let me get this right. You're planning to do all this in time for… tomorrow night?"

"Sure." Raskin grinned. "Why not? The sooner the better, right?"

Sid was shaking his head, but he smiled too. "I hope you know what you're doing, Rasky…"

Despite Raskin's grin, inside, in his chest, he couldn't stop himself shaking. And yet, there _was_ something very exciting about this all. He couldn't wait for tomorrow to come around now, and struggled to remember the last time he had felt like that. He had needed this, he realised: something different, something _wild_ , something so out of keeping with the life he had gotten used to sleepwalking through.

It just so happened that this _something_ was very illegal.


	2. Sticks and Stones

Even though Raskin wasn't going to work, he got up as early as usual. The first thing he did—after eating breakfast, of course—was scribble a quick note on paper, addressed to his manager at the bank, Pangoro, explaining he was sick and wouldn't be in.

One good thing about modern Deepden was that one could seldom get more than a street away from a post office. Perhaps the city's burgeoning population meant that this was simply required to keep all the flying pokémon in work. Even so, there certainly wasn't a lack of demand—the post office at the end of their apartment block's road had a short queue outside, despite the early hour. Or perhaps because of it. It was difficult to tell.

A yellow-hided sandshrew was at the reception desk. She glanced at the address on the note, making note of its distance, before charging Raskin a small fee. Then she passed on the letter to a spearow, one of several pokémon waiting behind the desk. The letter was slipped into a pouch around the 'mon's neck, with a small flap making it easy for the spearow to reach in with its beak and pluck out each letter.

Next, Raskin and Sid took the familiar ride towards Pokémon Bank. They stopped at both the ivysaur's (whom Raskin learned was called Aster) and Chaka the raticate's bakeries, with Raskin taking the lead in explaining their plan to them. Both reacted with surprise and a little apprehension—especially Chaka, who at first just laughed nervously. But once Raskin explained that the venue would be as far from police control as possible—and that, if anything _did_ happen, he and Sid would take responsibility—the two 'mon warmed to the idea.

Raskin suggested they meet him at nine at the Founding Oak: an enormous tree that had apparently been one of the first seeds planted in the development of the 'new' Deepden, over two hundred years ago. The tree had made a natural hub for all kinds of commerce and gatherings in the city's early days, but as Deepden continued to grow in population and modernise, businesses obtained their own trading spots further inland, and pubs or bars became the place to socialise. The slowly-dying Oak had long stopped being cared for, making it little more than a relic of the past.

It was, however, the easiest place to draw a line between Deepden and Oldden. Both bakers gave Raskin their approval.

"Rasky," Sid said, as they headed back to the transport station. "Why did you say we would take all responsibility if we get caught? That's… a bit of an unnecessary risk, isn't it?"

"Perhaps," Raskin acknowledged. "But I figured that, as the obvious organisers of this, pokémon will be quick to blame us in any circumstance. May as well turn that fact into a positive negotiating tool, eh?"

"I see," Sid said, face screwed up in thought. "Another question, then. The timing of this, at 9…"

"I figured the later the better."

"No, I get that. But what about rides back into town? They stop after about 11, don't they?"

"I don't think we'll be sticking around for that long," Raskin said, then paused. "That's a good point though. It might look suspicious if thirty 'mon all get the same obscure, late-night ride. I'll ask people to break up their travel a little. Walk or fly if they're able, too."

 _Is that overly paranoid?_ he wondered. _No. We should take as many precautions as we can._

He saw a flash of white fur in his periphery, and looked over to see a familiar zangoose heading in the opposite direction. Luis took much pride in keeping his coat sleek and shiny, which always made him stand out.

Raskin's eyes lit up. "Luis!" he called, getting the 'mon's attention.

Luis found him, and they consciously stepped to the side of the street, avoiding the masses of commuting bodies.

"What's up? Where are you going at this hour?" Luis asked, clearly confused.

"I'm kind of... not going into work today," Raskin said. "But it's good that I found you. Do you remember the dispute in the street yesterday between those two bakers?" He quickly explained his plan again, as well as what he had already agreed between Chaka and Aster.

Once he had finished, Luis blinked at him for a moment. Then he grinned. "Did somebody sneak chesto juice into your dinner last night?"

Raskin frowned. "I'm sorry?"

Luis laughed, giving the nickit a clap on the shoulder. He knew Raskin found that annoying. "What I'm saying is that you're a mad bastard. I thought you didn't even like sport!"

"I mean, I don't _not like_ it, but…" Raskin looked away, feeling his face heat up. He'd never admitted that to anyone directly except Sid. Was he that easy to see through?

He managed to clear his head. "Anyway Luis, I need your help. Sid and I have to sort out the venue in Oldden, and I don't want to risk Pangoro seeing me around the bank when I said I was ill. Could you spread the word about the fight? Just the time and location of the Founding Oak are sufficient." He hadn't told Luis that they still needed to _find_ a venue.

"Sure thing," Luis smiled. "Though I doubt it'll take much for this to spread like wildfire."

"Well, try not to whisper it too loud then. If the wrong person overhears…"

Luis nodded. "I know. I gotcha covered."

Raskin thanked him, and they quickly agreed to meet again later before Luis had to rush off to get to work on time.

* * *

Raskin and Sid hopped off their next ride at the closest street to Oldden, though that itself was a good fifteen-minute walk away. It was like walking gradually back in time: the streets became rougher and hole-ridden, buildings grew sparser and increasingly dilapidated. A silence grew over them, eerier still for it being in broad daylight. Raskin was used to Central Deepden which practically never slept, especially not at this hour.

Even given the gradual shift in conditions, passing the Founding Oak and into Oldden was like entering another world. It was situated in the dip of an immense valley, which stretched far either side of their entrance point. The upside of this position was that it was well-shielded against winds. That, Raskin remembered being taught, was the main reason why stray pokémon had first chosen this area to settle. But one factor they seemingly hadn't considered was how often it would naturally flood. The central, flattest parts of the province had either standing water or a swamp-like layer of mud covering it almost all year-round. Raskin had to watch his footing to avoid large puddles that had yet to dry out.

Unsurprisingly, most of the structures—'buildings' felt like too generous a term—still standing were further up the valley, and this was where Raskin and Sid began searching. Pokémon had lived together in large numbers back then, which was still evident from the enormous slices of wood and piles of hay left behind. Being built on the edges of the valley's big trough, most structures were lopsided. Raskin wondered if his ancestors had realised that it was useful to build on flat ground. Perhaps it was merely a trade-off between living on an angle or living in a swamp.

Their search was fruitless for quite some time: buildings that looked promising were in fact missing large sections of wall, or were built on wood so rotten and flaky that it looked like the whole thing would crumble under a slight breeze. Raskin was starting to get uncomfortable - every time he heard a rustling of wind or a twig snap underfoot he tensed, expecting something to jump out at them.

But then they turned a corner, revealing a building that seemed perfect. It had a wider radius than most of the dens, no gaps at all, and its wooden beams were packed with nails, some parts even covered in a glossy substance that looked like glue. It had been built on level, firm ground, and had a door, albeit one without a visible lock.

"Look at this beauty!" Sid exclaimed as they drew near.

Raskin smiled, relieved. "Better check the inside before we get too excited."

He gave the door a firm nudge to open. Then, he almost jumped out of his fur.

A purple nidoran was lying right in front of them. It opened an eye, then upon seeing Raskin suddenly leapt to its feet.

"Who are you?" he barked, baring his teeth.

"What?" Raskin yelped. "I… uh, we…"

Then, the nidoran tackled him.

At first Raskin was too startled to react. A _fight?_ He hadn't had to fight since he was a kit!

Then some survival instinct kicked in. He squirmed, suddenly panting, trying to wrestle the thing off him. But the nidoran did not relent. There was no nuance to his attack; he clawed, kicked, bit all at once. Raskin's limbs seemed to have forgotten how to respond. The nauseating smell of the nidoran's dirt-stained hide in his face only made things worse.

Suddenly, a flash of red and blue shoved the nidoran away from him, and the pressure relented. Gasping for breath, Raskin saw Sid on all fours, facing down the rogue creature. Fire was spitting at the quilava's head and rear—another sight Raskin had almost forgotten existed.

The nidoran hissed an awful, shrill cry, then his haunches twitched, which Sid read as a sign of its intentions. He leapt to the side of the attempted tackle, then while the nidoran was unbalanced, took a deep breath. He arched his back forward and opened his mouth, but rather than fire, all that came out was a spattering of smoke. Sid started coughing violently, giving the nidoran more than enough time to tackle him to the floor successfully.

"Stop!" Raskin cried, but the nidoran didn't seem to hear. Raskin watched in horror as he thrashed with what seemed like even greater intensity than before. Every time Sid tried to escape, one of the 'mon's limbs pinned him down again.

A thick, purplish substance was gathering at the spike on the nidoran's head. Raskin didn't want to find out what would happen if that got under one of their furs. _I have to do something!_

Two ideas came to mind. Neither filled him with much hope, but he did them both.

"HEEEEELP!" he howled, as loud as he could, before struggling to his feet and running towards the nidoran. He looked up, snarling; Raskin could see every bone under his thin hide tensed. He tried scratching at it with his front claws, but with a single swipe, the nidoran caught him across the face, making the nickit stumble back. The nidoran then kicked Sid in the nose, which made the quilava's flame sacs flicker, before extinguishing.

Just as the nidoran turned its attention on Raskin again, the door of the house was slammed open. All three 'mon froze to look at the figure in the entrance: a bipedal pokémon with red-and-white fur, as well as an enormous white mane, whose mottled colour made it difficult to distinguish what was fur and dirt. Lycanroc.

A ring of rocks and stones levitated around the lycanroc's feet. She swept her paws forwards and the rocks flew with them, moving together into a kind of unconnected sphere. Raskin gave an involuntary yelp even though the rocks crashed into the nidoran, knocking the 'mon into the air until it collided with a wall.

"I told you before to stay out of here," the lycanroc said angrily. "Don't make me ask again!"

The nidoran raised its head and hissed again, despite its obvious defeat. "What about them?" he spat, nodding to Raskin and Sid.

"They have nothing to do with _your_ trespassing," the lycanroc replied. "Now get out!"

With a slow inevitability, the nidoran got up and began trudging towards the door. Then, at about halfway there, he suddenly broke into a sprint and vanished into the valley.

Raskin barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief and process what he'd just seen before the lycanroc's crimson eyes bore into him. "I'm gonna require a _very_ good explanation for what you pathetic hatchlings are doing here," she said.

In his periphery, Raskin saw Sid look imploringly at him. _I_ was _the one who organised this mess,_ he thought wearily. _I guess I should explain._

"Firstly, we had no idea you…" He paused. "Live here?"

He was hesitant to say so, since this lycanroc seemed too… _well-off_ to be living in Oldden. Unlike the nidoran, she looked like she ate enough, and though her fur was a little scruffy, it did not compare to the ungodly scents their attacker had worn. He couldn't pin down her age, but he would guess she was older than him and, more importantly, she had Shifted from a rockruff—he doubted a 'mon living as rough as the nidoran would have the strength to do that.

"Not exactly," she said. "But this place _does_ belong to me. And you haven't explained why you thought you could mosey in."

Raskin exchanged another look with Sid. The quilava shrugged, as if to say, _What harm could it do to explain?_ Raskin was mostly in agreement. This 'mon seemed about as far from Deepden's police force as one could be.

"We're holding a kind of street fight tonight," Raskin said. He saw a flicker of surprise cross the lycanroc's face. "We figured Oldden would be a good place to host it, since police don't really patrol here. We were just looking around, and—"

"You thought you'd found the jackpot?" the lycanroc said flatly.

"Well…" A thought occurred to Raskin. "Would you disagree? This is by far the nicest house we've seen here."

The lycanroc gave him a critical look. "I'm flattered." She sat back against a wall, folding her arms. "Tell me about this… street fight."

Raskin pawed the floor for a moment, thinking of how best to explain. "How much do you know about life in Deepden?" he asked eventually.

"I _live_ there, dummy."

He cringed. Not the best start. "Right, well, you know that fighting is illegal, and that any fights that threaten to break out are instantly quashed. But pokémon still _want_ to see it happen. They want to watch. And, given you can't do that anywhere else, I expect they'll pay to do it here. We already have two 'mon that want to fight each other. Now we just need to make the event happen."

The lycanroc still regarded him with suspicion. "You speak like it's a business to you."

Raskin wasn't sure how to respond. Sid got in before him. "We want to have fun, too!" the quilava said. "Life has been kinda shitty for me recently, and doing this feels… liberating. I think there's a few 'mon we're inviting that feel similarly."

The lycanroc nodded, looking thoughtful. "And how much money were you hoping to make tonight?"

"If we get 30 people paying 15 each, 450 poké," Raskin said.

"450..." The lycanroc ran her paws through her mane, doing little to smooth it out. "I think I can cut you a deal. You can use my place to host your little fight. _But_ ," she added, noting Raskin and Sid's delighted faces, "I take a third of your proceeds. Two-thirds if anything in the house is damaged. Plus, if it gets discovered by police or whoever, I'm outta here. You're fully responsible."

Raskin had expected as much already, so that was no problem. His thoughts turned to her other proposal. _What_ is _there to be damaged?_ he wondered, looking around the room. Compared to what he knew, it was staggeringly empty. A stack of rocks stood in one corner—some of them had been manipulated to attack the nidoran, he realised—and near that was a thick pile of hay with a slight lycanroc-sized indent in the top. There was nothing else, unless it had been concealed. No seating, food storage, bathroom… Raskin was at a loss as to how anyone could live this way.

"If I can ask you something," Raskin said. "If you don't live here… then why is it yours?"

The lycanroc sighed. "I have some very loud neighbours. Sometimes, the only place I can get sleep is out here… like last night, for instance."

"And it's _easier_ to sleep in this?"

"Sure." She shrugged. "Our ancestors didn't live in nice soft beds, y'know. We haven't changed _that_ much."

"Why don't you at least make a noise complaint?" Sid asked. "We have, before. Things cleared up pretty quickly."

The lycanroc narrowed her eyes. "I have reasons," she said evasively. "You didn't answer my proposal, anyway."

Raskin turned to Sid. "What do you think?" the quilava asked him.

Raskin did that for a moment. "We'll make less money, but from what I've seen of Oldden, it'll be hard to find a better location than here. At least, one that's still relatively close to the city."

Sid nodded. "We've already travelled far enough for my liking." He gave a slight shiver at the words.

Raskin agreed. He was willing to take _some_ risks tonight, probably more than would normally be reasonable. But he did not want to take his chances of getting attacked, mugged or beaten. You never knew what would happen out here—the nidoran had already proven that.

"We'll do it," he said to the lycanroc.

She nodded, satisfied. "I'll leave it to you to get the place prepared, then," she said, turning to leave. "I'll be back tonight."

Her words made Raskin pause. She was a couple of pawsteps out of the door when he called, "Wait! Uh… Miss Lycanroc?"

The lycanroc stopped. "Gods above," she muttered, looking to the sky. "Just call me Lyco next time."

 _Lyco?_ Raskin thought, puzzled. _Surely her parents wouldn't have called her something so… impersonal._ That was the least of his concern though. "Lyco, then," he said. "What do you mean about getting it prepared? I mean, this place is almost empty already. Surely that's all we need."

Lyco turned to face them. "Nonsense. You'll need to mark a perimeter."

"Perimeter…?"

"You think you can just give this raticate and ivysaur the entire room to fight in?" Lyco said cuttingly. "Where will the crowd stand? Anyone could get hit by a missed attack."

 _I hadn't thought of that,_ Raskin noted. _Are we really as naïve as she seems to think we are?_

"Could we use those rocks of yours?" Sid asked, gesturing to the pile.

Lyco frowned. "We _could_ , but it's hardly ideal. They could get kicked, tripped over and such. There's a big chalk deposit close to the Dividing River that would make a much better tool."

Raskin saw Sid took an involuntary step back at the mention of the river, and Lyco rolled her eyes, reading the quilava's face immediately. "I'll go with you," she said wearily. "Now, don't tell me you two haven't thought of lighting, either?"

"Hm? Why would we…" Raskin trailed off, his ears drooping in shame. "Oh, right... it's gonna be dark later."

Lyco raised her eyelids at him, as if sarcastically saying 'well done'. "We'll need torches. Proper torches, not those shitty electric ones."

Raskin wished he could pretend he knew what she was implying. "Just tell us what we need to do, then," he said.

That brought a smirk from the lycanroc. "Gather some cloths that you don't mind getting burned, and some cooking oil. Maybe some lengths of string, too. Everything else should be available here."

Raskin nodded, about to confer with Sid, but his friend spoke first. "I can get those things," he said. "If you don't mind going to the river, Rasky?"

It was more of a plea than a question, Raskin could tell. Sid had come off significantly worse from the nidoran fight, with red scratch marks littering his stomach and arms. Raskin felt relieved, and a little ashamed, that he hadn't been so involved in the fight. Sid would have a task explaining where those marks came from when he returned to work.

"That's fine," Raskin agreed, then gestured Lyco towards the door. "Shall we?"

* * *

The Dividing River stood at the bottom of Oldden's valley. This was the final frontier standing between Deepden society and the Wilderness. The river was vast in length and width, its distant shore at the other end only a fingerprint on the horizon. In autumn and winter, when rainfall was heaviest, the river could get even wider.

Raskin had never been this close before. He had seen the river once, while at school: as part of a special history class, a team of flyers had hovered his class over it. He mainly remembered them just emphasising its danger: how the river was littered with bloodthirsty fish pokémon who would rip into any meat they could sink their teeth into. And in the unlikely event that anyone made it all the way to shore, the pokémon of the Wilderness would be no less compromising.

He had suspected then, and still did now, that those stories had been exaggerated; designed to scare off any foolhardy kids from venturing into the freezing water for a dare. But even if one did see through the stories, the sight alone of the river's murky expanse, followed by the huge, unending mass of Wilderness forestry on its other side, was enough to dissuade almost anyone. For stories of missing people in Deepden were very rare nowadays and, perhaps most tellingly, no pokémon had been to the Wilderness and come back alive—at least, no documented 'mon.

Raskin stuck as close to Lyco as he dared, not wanting her to get even more irritated with him. He noticed that her movement over the rocks and mud of the valley was somewhat jilted, as if she carried an injury somewhere. He couldn't see any marks on her though; the nidoran certainly hadn't done anything.

"Are you alright?" he asked, making her glance at him. "You're… moving kinda stiff."

"I'm fine," she said gruffly. "Attacking that 'mon took a bit out of me. Haven't had to do that in a while."

That only raised more questions to Raskin. "How did you do that?" he said. "Move those rocks, I mean."

"Not all rock-types have to be covered in armour and weigh a hundred kilos, you know."

"I _know_ what type you are," Raskin said, trying not to get irritated. "I've never seen another pokémon do that with rocks, though."

"Well, if you've never seen a proper fight, it's no wonder."

Raskin frowned. "It's not just to do with fights. What about for construction, or street-works, say? If 'mon could move rocks around that easily, it would—"

"Are you listening?" Lyco snapped, kicking a rabble of pebbles away. "I _can't_ move rocks 'easily'. Why bother with fireplaces if you could just get a typhlosion blowing a constant stream of it into the room? Pokémon abilities don't work like that. Especially if they're not practiced."

 _Alright,_ Raskin thought, her tone giving him an involuntary shiver, _I'll pretend I never asked. I was just curious…_

The chalk deposit was close to the edge of a bank that dropped straight down into the river. He found a firm-enough chunk, and it held well when he tested it on the hard ground. Then he grabbed another piece just in case.

"Good," Lyco said brusquely. "Let's head back then."

Raskin's gaze lingered on the river for a moment. He could see ripples here and there, and had the vague hope that something would leap up from the water—perhaps a gyarados, that mighty, serpent-like creature that featured greatly in antique artworks, flying into the air to catch vulnerable flyers. Of course, nothing did appear, because no flyers would be stupid enough to cross within a mile of the river's territory nowadays. So he reluctantly turned back to the gloom of Oldden.

Lyco instructed him on how the room's perimeter should be drawn, without doing the actual work herself. Raskin was getting the impression that she just enjoyed pushing him around. Drawing out a massive circle of chalk in the rough, dirt floor with his unpractised paws was also more tiring than he realised. The circle covered the majority of the room, but left roughly equal space at all four corners, the reasoning being that this way, as many 'mon as possible could get a good view. Important not just for enjoyment, but to jump out of the way of a stray attack.

Sid returned shortly afterwards, with oil, string and a bundle of old tea towels. The quilava had very bad habits around tea towels, frequently burning them on the stove or inexplicably mistaking them for a washing scourer and getting them stained. They needed replacing often, despite Raskin's best efforts with Sid, and the nickit was strangely pleased at the thought of this tattered set getting incinerated.

The three of them then collected some pieces of wood to light. Lyco suggested that eight torches would be ideal for the room's squarish shape: one at each corner, and one at each midpoint of a wall. One problem not even Lyco had foreseen was how the wooden logs would stick in place. Fortunately, pouring water onto patches of dirt softened it enough to drive the logs firmly into the ground. As per Lyco's instruction, they tied a tea towel around the top of each log.

Raskin could see where things were going now. But as he moved to pour oil on one of the towels, Lyco yelled at him to stop.

"You can't light them yet!" she scolded. "It's hours until this fight is meant to start. They'll have burnt to the floor by then."

"But… how can we be sure that this'll work?" Sid frowned.

Lyco made an annoyed grunt. She sliced off a dangling piece of cloth from one of the logs, then picked up a nearby stick and roughly tied the cloth around. Taking the oil from Raskin, she carefully added a few drops to it.

"Try lighting it," she said to Sid.

"What—with my fire?" he spluttered.

She stared at him. "Can you not even do _that_?"

"N-no, I can!" Sid took the log in his paw, stared at it for a second, then exhaled forcefully. A small flame appeared, catching quickly on the oil-soaked cloth. Almost instantly, a fire had sprung up.

Sid laughed nervously, his relief obvious. "That is cool."

"Glad to have reassured you," Lyco said, taking it back and stamping out the flame.

"If that's everything for now, we should be getting back," Raskin said. "There's still work that needs doing." _Getting an actual_ audience _, namely…_

Lyco shrugged. "Make sure you're not late."

Raskin doubted she was going to just sit in the house for the whole afternoon, but the lycanroc made no move to leave. She seemed to be waiting for them to go first, as if she wanted to keep her own whereabouts a secret.

 _Strange 'mon,_ Raskin thought as they left. _Let's hope she stays on our side._


	3. The Fight

Raskin rinsed the paint from his paw and looked at his work. He had found himself with a little spare time back at their flat, and his mind was too preoccupied about the impending fight to do anything unrelated to it. So instead, he’d dug out a wooden board that used to be part of Sid’s wardrobe door—a drunken accident had put an end to that—and the remainder of a tin of paint they had painted the walls with long ago.

 _BATTLE OF THE BAKERS INSIDE_ , the board read. Part of Raskin loathed himself for using a cheesy title that Sid had come up with, but it didn’t matter a great deal. The sign wasn’t designed to attract attention—in fact, he hoped that their location would do the very opposite of that. It would simply convince the pokémon coming, particularly those he didn’t know, that they were walking into something a little more professional than a loner’s wooden shed in the middle of a wastetown. Even though that was the truth.

He reached Lyco’s house at 8:30, half an hour before the fight, and the lycanroc was already waiting outside. She had a bottle of cheap-looking whisky in one hand. She didn’t offer Raskin any.

“What the hell is that?” she said disdainfully, jabbing a paw at his sign.

“I knew you’d like it,” Raskin said. “I figured a little decoration wouldn’t do any harm.”

“As long as it’s destroyed once tonight is finished,” Lyco grunted. “Where’s Sid?”

“He went to find his friends at a pub,” Raskin said, sitting down close to, but not next to her. “They might’ve roped him in for a few drinks.”

“Well, he’d better return soon: we need him for the torches. You didn’t bring any matches, did you?”

Raskin had not. He was alarmed at the speed that the sky was darkening; it was already difficult to see more than a few feet ahead of him. They really did need Sid.

When his watch reached quarter to 9, he could not wait any longer. “Wait here,” he told Lyco. “I’ll go to the Founding Oak and see what’s happening.” Lyco just nodded.

He fumbled his way back through Oldden’s slopes, mainly guided by the distant electric lights of civilisation in the distance. He reached the Founding Oak, and after waiting a few minutes there came a lively babble of conversation, accompanied by a thudding of several sets of paws. Raskin cursed. People were already arriving!

“Rasky!” a voice called, and Raskin relaxed, but only a little. These were Sid’s friends, and the quilava had travelled with them.

“Hey, buddy!” Sid said loudly as he emerged from the darkness. “Everything set? You excited?”

Raskin took one look at his woozy expression, then yanked him to the side. “This wasn’t an opportunity to get smashed, Sid,” he hissed, quiet enough so only Sid would hear. “You need to light the torches, remember?”

“Sorry,” Sid said, suddenly straightening up. “Don’t worry, I’m not _too_ buzzed. Just… excited. If you act really excited, other people will get excited too, y’know?”

At that nugget of wisdom, Raskin managed a smile. “Well done for getting so many to come along,” he conceded. “I trust that no one found out that we didn’t want to?”

Sid puffed out his cheeks. “C’mon, dude. I’m better than that.” He paused, scratching his head. “What do you want me to do again? Light the torches?”

“Yes.” Raskin thought for a second. He searched around for a piece of wood, soon finding one about the length of his foreleg. “Take this crowd to the house,” he said, “but before you do, light this for me. Then I can show everyone else the way when they show up.”

“Sounds good.” Sid inhaled for a moment, then blew out a solid ember onto the wood, igniting it.

 _Perhaps some beer loosened his… fire chords, or whatever they are,_ Raskin thought. “Oh, and make sure they all pay!” he called, as Sid led the band of pokémon away. 

There were… a lot of pokémon, he realised. More than Sid usually drank with. He counted the number of faces: 10, 12, 15...

“Sid!” he called, running back for the quilava. 

Sid’s surprised face was lit up in the torchlight. “Rasky?”

“Who are all these _people_?” Raskin muttered, glancing behind him at the group.

“Oh, just some guys we got chatting to at the pub. They heard what we were planning and wanted to know more. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“I…” Raskin’s face contorted, unsure whether to feel happy, or infuriated, or both. “You took a big risk with them, Sid. We were meant to keep this strictly to ‘mon we could trust!”

“Oh chill out, Rasky,” Sid said, grinning. “Have you ever met a ‘mon at the White Entei who’s not totally sound?”

Raskin gave the pokémon another look. The reason he hadn’t noticed the newcomers at first was due to how seamlessly they were mingling with Sid’s friends. _Though alcohol does do that to people..._

“They seem okay,” he admitted. “Just keep an eye out for trouble.”

“Of course I will, ya dolt!”

As Sid strolled past him again, a particular member of the group caught Raskin’s eye. It was a snubbull called Bushu, who carried a hardwood drum that was practically as big as his stocky body.

“Bushu!” Raskin exclaimed. “I didn’t know you still played.”

The snubbull paused to turn to him, a glint in his eye. “Once I heard about this gig, I figured it was worth dusting off the lil’ boy,” he smiled. “Here’s hoping those skills never left me.”

A few moments after the group had gone, another thought occurred to Raskin. _Crap! What if Bushu’s thumping alerts the police?_ Then he told himself to be calm. _It’s only one drum. And we’re a good mile from any civilisation here. This was exactly the kind of thing that led us to choose Oldden..._

More pokémon soon began arriving in rapid succession. Chaka came with a group of ‘mon as grizzled looking as himself; Aster hopped off moments later, accompanied only by a shy-looking deerling. Luis was the latest to arrive on the stroke of 9, but he improbably brought an even larger group than Sid. 

“We just managed to get a ride in time,” he told Raskin with a grin. “I think those arcanine were preeeetty confused by the crowd of us.”

Doing a quick head-count, adding it to the numbers he had already noted, Raskin was stunned. He had targeted thirty pokémon, and that had been optimistic at best. If his counting was correct, this was closer to fifty. 

“Is everyone here for the fight?” he asked, getting a surprisingly loud roar of approval back. Evidently Sid’s friends weren’t the only ones a little imbibed. “Follow me, then.” 

He took a couple of steps, then paused. “Actually, can a two-legs carry the torch?” On the uneven ground, he didn’t fancy balancing on his back legs with a flaming stick in paw. Thankfully, Luis was happy to help.

As the two of them led the way, Raskin noticed Aster and his deerling friend walking ahead of the main rabble, only exchanging a few quiet words.

Raskin caught the ivysaur’s uneasy gaze. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

“Honestly?” Aster came closer to him. “I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here. Or maybe that’s just my girlfriend’s influence on me.”

Raskin laughed nervously underneath a thought process of _shit, shit, shit._ Aster absolutely could not back out now. “She still wanted to watch you, though?”

“Yeah.” Aster smiled thinly, giving the deerling a glance. “I feel like we both know it’s a bad idea, but we both wanna see it happen. I don’t understand it, to be honest.”

Raskin glanced behind him. Chaka had a beer bottle raised high to his mouth. He certainly looked well up for the fight, wearing a tawny-coloured bandana around his neck, and his fur being purposefully ruffled up, adding a couple of artificial inches to his stature. “If you keep your head around Chaka, I reckon you’ve got him under lock,” Raskin said.

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Aster replied. “Have you seen him kneading dough all day, though? Those limbs are more flexible than you’d think.”

Soon, an orange beacon guided their path to the house. _Sid managed to light those torches then, thank the gods._ Lyco was leaning beside the entrance, holding out a cheap paper bag, telling ‘mon to pay in the most exact change they had. Raskin felt glad she was on top of the money side of things, because he doubted Sid would be. 

When he entered the room, he had to pause for a moment to take stock. The lighting was far better than what he could have imagined: bright at the edges of the room, but dim, flickering, somehow primal around the centre, where the ‘mon would fight. The room was packed out even before this latest group entered, and there was a loud buzz of discussion. Either there was some serious excitement for this fight, or everyone had just gotten really drunk… or most likely, both.

Raskin gave it a few more minutes, mainly to give everyone a chance to find a place in the room to stand. When it seemed settled, he caught up with Sid and got him to fetch Aster. Raskin escorted Chaka to one side of the chalk centre, the raticate beating his fists together at the sight of Aster moving to the opposite end.

Raskin walked between the two pokémon to the centre of the circle and stood up on his hind legs. “Everyone!” he announced, then repeated himself, having to shout to get their attention. The gathered faces turned their heads to him. He did his best not to flinch. They didn’t look _dangerous_ , he reassured himself, just very… lively.

“Thank you all for coming to our little event,” he said, which brought a significant cheer in itself. “I know what you’re all here for, so we’ll get the fight right underway shortly. Just a couple of things. Please try not to damage anything in here, since Lyco might kill me if you do.” That got a good laugh, though the look Lyco gave him from the back of the room made his fur stand on end. _Crap. Please don’t actually kill me._

“In addition, when we finish, try not to all get the same rides back into the city centre. I don’t want the police to get suspicious… especially because there’s a few more of you than we expected. So walk, or wait a few minutes extra if you can. With that said…” He glanced at Sid. Raskin didn’t feel right doing this last bit. “Can you say it?”

Sid grinned like a child. “Everyone,” he roared, the flames on his back spitting, “it’s time for the BATTLE OF THE BAKERS!”

The sound made by the crowded pokémon was unlike anything Raskin had heard before. He’d been to the athletics finals once growing up, one of the biggest events in Deepden’s calendar. It took place in a stadium filled with many thousands of pokémon, who whooped or booed depending on how their favourites or, more often, their type representative was performing.

Yet this rickety room of scattered groups of ‘mon, most of whom didn’t even have a favourite of the two fighters, produced a roar more passionate and visceral than any athletics event could. It made Raskin’s neck-fur stand on end again, this time in a good way.

Sid tugged the nickit’s ear. “We should get out of the arena,” he suggested, rather urgently.

Before Raskin could move, a ball of cream fur shot past him, missing so narrowly that he could smell dough for a second.

Chaka barrelled into Aster’s chest, producing a _thump_ like a geodude hitting its head on the ceiling. It looked for a moment like Aster would fly straight into the pokémon behind him and through the wall of the building, but his vines dug into the rough earth and flung him back towards the chalk arena like a slingshot.

Raskin scrambled backwards faster than he could think, and Sid was just as alert. The quilava retreated clumsily to where most pokémon stood, at the very edge of the fighting ring. Raskin couldn’t understand that. He backed away, pushing through bodies, until he was up against a wall, getting onto his hind legs so he could still see the arena. Even then, seeing how easily Aster had been tossed through the air, he didn’t feel very safe. _At least I’ve got a good second to react from here..._

Chaka started running at Aster again, but the ivysaur jumped out of reach of Chaka’s little arms, using his vines like a pair of crutches to balance himself. Aster backed away towards the centre of the arena, his vines hovering either side of him, and he and Chaka slowly began to circle each other. Raskin relaxed a little; perhaps they would calm down now.

Bushu’s drum started playing.

The rhythm was simple; a whole beat, then two half-beats. But it changed the atmosphere at once. Some of the crowd had been exchanging words over the current lapse in action; this hushed them. There was suddenly an air of anticipation.

_Dum… dum-dum dum… dum-dum dum…_

Both Chaka and Aster started snarling at each other as they circled. Each impatient, waiting for the other to show their hand. The drum beat a little faster.

_Dum, dum-dum dum, dum-dum dum…_

“Take him, Ast!” someone shouted. The crowd roared into life at the words.

“Tackle him, Chaka!”

“Take his legs!”

“You’re faster than him!

“You’ve got this grass-muncher!”

“Hey, what did you call him?”

Raskin flinched. The deerling who had been with Aster was right in front of him, glaring at a krokorok who had instinctively backed away a little, leaving a hole in the crowd between them.

“You wanna see what us grass-munchers can do?” the deerling challenged, kicking one of her hind legs against the ground.

For a moment the krokorok looked apprehensive, but then his snout bent into a smile. “Bring it on,” he growled, widening his stance.

The deerling didn’t hesitate. She hurtled forwards and swung a hoof at the dark-type, who threw himself to the ground, almost falling on her in doing so. He reached out and yanked her nearest hoof, making the deerling squeal and her legs collapse from under her.

“Hey, HEY!” Sid blundered through the crowd until he could get in between the two pokémon. “You’re not in the arena, so you don’t fight! Break it up!”

Neither the deerling nor krokorok seemed to mind getting pushed apart much. Sid glanced Raskin’s way, and the nickit gave him a smile and wave of thanks. He was impressed that Sid had been so aware to the situation.

A howl from Chaka caught his attention. He had almost forgotten about the two bakers in the midst of that scuffle, but from the ‘mon’s intense expressions, they hadn’t even noticed the distraction. Neither had Bushu the drummer.

_Dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum…_

Chaka lunged at Aster with a clawed hand. Aster swerved away again and slapped the raticate in the face with one of his vines. Parts of the crowd laughed. Chaka howled with anger, then suddenly whipped his tail into Aster’s body, catching him by surprise. As Aster stumbled, Chaka finally hit his body with scratch, scratched again with his other arm, then clenched his first paw, getting a glancing punch on the side of Aster’s head. This brought the first cry of pain from the ivysaur. His vines came together and pushed outwards, moving Chaka backwards a little.

Both pokémon paused for breath. Chaka was on all-fours now, and Aster was already about as low to the ground as he could be. Both ‘mon were bruised and cut, bodies shaking with fatigue. 

_Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum—_

Chaka leapt directly at the ivysaur and opened his mouth. His teeth seemed to grow, somehow—either that, or they just caught the torchlight unnaturally—and he brought them straight down onto Aster’s arm.

The crowd gasped. The drum stopped. Raskin felt his breath leave him. The only sound was Aster’s scream, both in shock and agony.

Aster tried to shake Chaka off him, but the raticate held on. Aster was still, mouth pulled in a grimace, then he flung his body to the floor, taking Chaka with him. The raticate finally released his teeth, leaving a nasty-looking gash in Aster’s scales. But the ivysaur jumped straight back up, facing Chaka. His rose-coloured bud began glowing, its folds expanding and straining. Then he tipped his body forward, letting a volley of seeds fly out of the bud, each one the size of a fist.

The first three all connected with Chaka, hitting him with such force that he toppled backwards and out of the arena’s circle altogether. But whatever had possessed Aster did not stop there. The seeds kept firing at where Chaka had been, and as the pokémon behind flung themselves to safety, the only barrier left was the house’s wooden wall.

It took two hits for the wood to give way. Three more seeds punched the hole wide.

“Stop! STOP IT!”

The sudden roar broke Aster out of his stupor. It was Lyco, storming into the circle to confront the ivysaur. “What the hell are you playing at?” she snarled. “This is my house, not a fucking scrapyard!”

“I-I’m sorry!” Aster yelped, backing away. All of a sudden, his bud had deflated again, his vines shooting back inside it. “I just got… carried away…”

“Damn right you did,” Lyco seethed. She looked around the room, which was motionless. “Yeah, party’s over, folks. Go home.” After a moment’s hesitation, a few pokémon from the crowd started trudging towards the door.

A couple of Chaka’s friends moved over to him, helping him to his feet. Chaka brushed off their concerned questions, though he did require an arm on each shoulder for a few steps. 

“Hey,” he said, eyes fixed on Aster, who was practically huddling next to his deerling partner. She, however, was muttering something to the krokorok who had challenged her.

Aster looked up, wide-eyed. “Chaka,” he breathed, “gods, I am so sorry. I don’t understand what happened, I never meant to—”

“Eh?” Chaka interrupted. He laughed, a great throaty boom. “Don’t apologise, lad. I deserved it! You outsmarted me in there. Had to resort to nasty tactics.” He grimaced, holding out a paw to the ivysaur. “Good fight, eh? Haven’t fought like that since I was a kit.”

Aster, after looking stunned for a moment, managed to relax and return Chaka’s smile. “Good fight,” he agreed, slapping the paw with one of his own.

Raskin observed them with faint wonder as they started leaving together, chatting like old friends. _I thought they would end up hating each other. Didn’t they_ already _hate each other? It’s like they let the fight happen in a different mindset to normal life. And they both seem better off for it._

“Hey, uh…” the krokorok from the crowd was approaching Lyco, though also keeping a safe distance from her. “Could we have the room for just a minute, to finish what we started…?”

Lyco’s face would have stopped even the most confident speaker in their tracks. “You are not _finishing_ anything in here,” she said, then grabbed hold of the ‘mon and shoved him towards the door. The krokorok made some annoyed mutterings, but he got the picture.

“Uh, thanks for coming, everyone!” Sid called from the back of the room, wearing a brave smile. “Hope you enjoyed yourselves. Remember to make your way home sensibly!”

Luis’s voice came from somewhere in the crowd. “Hey, why don’t we give it up for Raskin and Sid for organising this!”

It prompted another huge roar their way. Raskin, feeling a little sheepish at the praise, just raised a paw in thanks as the pokémon, finally, began streaming out of the door. He exchanged a glance with Sid, and could tell they were thinking the same thing: _This fight went down really well. Incredibly well._

Unfortunately, the only ‘mon in the room who would disagree had stayed with them.

“Well,” Lyco growled, her red eyes reflecting the torchlight like burning coals. “We had our deal. I’ll be taking two-thirds of that money. Gonna need it to repair the hole that plant left.”

“I doubt it costs 300 poké to buy some wood and nails—”

“Shut your scrawny mouth,” she snapped, cutting Raskin off. She slung the sack of money off her shoulders, tipping it at her feet. A vast pool of coins tumbled out. Even the lycanroc looked a bit surprised by it. 

“There were more than thirty pokémon here,” she remarked. “More than 300 poké.”

“Yes,” Raskin replied. “I wasn’t expecting so many.”

Lyco nodded, dragging the coins into piles. “Can’t say I’m too surprised.”

Raskin expected some kind of explanation to follow that up, but none followed, and Lyco didn’t seem in the mood for much conversation with him. Eventually she had made two piles, one significantly larger than the other, and she pushed the smaller pile towards Raskin. He counted the coins, with some difficulty given the mud from the floor that had already become stuck to some of them. 200 poké. 

“How much have you got there?” he asked. Lyco had already stuffed her pile into the paper bag she had collected the payments in.

“Twice what you have,” she replied.

Raskin gritted his teeth. “If you’ve deliberately counted wrong, I’ll-”

“Why would I have done that?” Lyco snapped. “Gods, I gave you my house for the evening and you still don’t trust me?”

Sid had a paw on Raskin’s shoulder before he could do anything more. “Let it go, Rasky,” the quilava said. “We still made more than we expected to.”

 _But... she’s getting the bulk of it._ Raskin sighed. There was little use in trying to argue. He didn’t know _what_ to argue, in truth, and even if he did, Lyco was twice his size. He and Sid scooped up their money and dumped it into his rucksack.

“Goodbye then,” he said, glancing back at Lyco. 

She didn’t respond until he was almost out of the door. “Don’t forget to get rid of that stupid sign!”

It was a sensible idea, in fairness: the sign was evidence they didn’t want to leave behind. The wood broke easily when he put his weight on it. “Did you like the sign?” he asked Sid.

Sid smiled amusedly. “It did a job. How long did you work on it?”

“Like, five minutes,” Raskin lied. It had taken at least ten to remember where their paint was.

The ride stop was empty when they arrived there. Even the electric lights were out. Raskin looked around, confused. “The service hasn’t stopped yet, has it?” He checked the watch on his foreleg. “It’s only quarter to 11.”

“Dunno,” Sid said. “Lights off is usually a sign they’ve finished. Do you wanna wait until the hour?”

A gust of wind blew past them, making Raskin shiver. “Forget it,” he muttered. “Let’s just walk.”

Soon they were back into inner Deepden. As they walked, Raskin realised he had been ever-so-slightly tense while they had been moving through Oldden. He felt much safer here among the well-lit streets and the orderly, secure concrete buildings. Bars were virtually the only commerce open at this hour, but the ones they passed were still lively, bringing a muffled ambience of laughing pokémon and acoustic music.

“What’s up, Rasky?” Sid asked after a while.

“Huh?” Raskin looked up from his semi-daze.

“You’re annoyed about something, I can tell.”

Raskin scowled. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m annoyed that Lyco scammed us out of half our money. We couldn’t have done anything about what happened!”

“I… get that,” Sid said slowly. “But Rasky, aren’t you proud of what we did tonight? We hosted a _proper_ fight. And it was amazing! I mean, have you ever seen anything like the final move Aster did? Sure, we didn’t make as much as we could have, but who cares? I would have done it all again for free.”

Raskin couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm. He was pleased to see Sid in much higher spirits than he had been last night. But he also felt a little embarrassed at the ‘mon’s words. Throughout the fight, the main emotion he had felt was… fear. And it had been Sid who intervened with those ‘mon in the crowd, not him. 

Was it a fear of getting caught in the crossfire? Or… that Chaka or Aster would severely hurt the other? Or just that an officer could bust open the door at any moment? 

Suddenly, he was back in his first home. Watching a lucario with glowing palms march through the front door, with half a dozen more hulking officers behind him. His father had kicked and spat trying to fend the officers off, until the lucario slapped him across the face, knocking him to the ground. Raskin heard himself scream—

“Rasky!”

Raskin started, then shook himself vigorously. He had forced those memories out of his mind. They would _not_ be returning now, not tonight.

“Sorry,” he said to Sid. “Tired and stuff.”

Sid nodded. They both knew, Raskin could tell, that there was more to it than that, but Sid did not question him. Little pieces of understanding like that were why Raskin valued his friend so dearly, whatever his flaws might be.

“Well anyway, I’m glad you had a good time,” Raskin said.

Sid smiled. “Pity we broke whatever we had going with Lyco, though. Her house… thing was a perfect venue. If we ever wanted to do this again, I mean.”

Before Raskin could reply, he heard a familiar voice from across the street. Following the direction of it, he froze. It was Aster and his girlfriend. A white-scarved rhyperior was bent down talking to them. If he had stood at full height, Aster would have barely reached his waist.

“I had an accident with some broken glass,” Aster was saying, gesturing to his bloody leg. “Lost balance, dropped the glass and fell right on top of it.”

“I see,” the rhyperior said gruffly. “And those bruises?”

“I was… on a table when I fell,” Aster said, blushing. “It was a long way down to the floor. We’d had a bit to drink...”

The rhyperior didn’t smile. “You should get that bandaged up,” he said.

“I had run out of bandages,” the deerling said quickly. “That’s why we were heading to Aster’s place to sort it out.” Aster nodded with her.

“Well, just be careful,” the rhyperior said, finally looking to move away.

“We will, sir!” Aster said, his voice quivering just a little. He and the deerling looked around quickly when he had passed—Raskin and Sid had ducked behind an alleyway, just as keen as they were to avoid the police officer—and when they found nobody, the grass pair hurried away into the night.

 _Maybe,_ Raskin thought as he watched them, _it’s a blessing we won’t be doing this again._


	4. Fallout

Raskin had assumed, perhaps naïvely, that his life would resume its usual mundanity following that night in Oldden. However, as soon as he walked into the bank the next morning, being greeted with a chorus of 'good mornings' that were more enthusiastic and jovial than was usually reserved for anyone, he knew that things had changed.

"How'd you sleep, Rasky?" Luis asked him, grinning. "Like an abra, I'd expect."

Raskin smiled bashfully as he sat down. "Something like that, yeah."

"When were you thinking of holding the next meeting?" a bright-eyed herdier opposite him asked. "I've got a couple of guys in mind who I think would be interesting…"

"I can talk about it later," Raskin said quickly, and when no one was looking he gave the herdier a piercing look. _Don't be so reckless!_ he mouthed.

Locki hadn't arrived yet, but it would be dangerous to assume that the skitty was the only 'mon they needed to watch their mouths around. Though he had seen most of the office at Oldden, it had not been unanimous.

Thankfully, the herdier and the rest of the room seemed to wise up after that, and there was no more discussion inside the office. Unfortunately, that meant his lunch break and walk back to the ride stop after work was spent being bombarded with questions. The answers seemed to tumble from his mouth of their own accord.

 _When's the next fight?_ "Soon. I'll let you know when."

 _Can I be in it?_ "I'll consider it."

 _Where's it gonna be?_ "We're scouting out locations right now."

_Where did this idea come from? How much money have you made? What happened between you and that crazy lycanroc?_

By the time Raskin was finally left alone, and the band of ride pokémon arrived, he barely had the strength to haul himself onto an arcanine's back.

 _What have I started?_ he thought, shaking his head as the air rushed past him. _It's not that I'm completely averse to holding another fight, but… do none of these pokémon realise how much of a risk we took in just holding_ one _?_

At least he had been vague in his answers with them. That would give him and Sid time to figure out what they would do with all this unexpected interest. The fact it was a Friday felt like a blessing; hopefully the weekend would give things a chance to die down.

He was surprised to find their apartment door locked upon returning. When he opened it, Sid was lying blissfully on the sofa, the radio blaring out some pleasant-sounding music.

"You found your key?" Raskin said as he came in.

"Huh? Oh, no, I just got a new one cut." Sid jingled a shiny keychain in front of his face.

Raskin smiled. The quilava was already putting his share of the fight money to good use.

"Oh, you got a letter," Sid added, passing him something from the sofa.

The first thing Raskin saw on the paper was a shield-shaped insignia, a flowing white scarf adorning it. His paw trembled so violently that the letter fell to the floor.

"Oh my god," he gasped, having to lean against the wall to stop his legs collapsing. His heart was beating so frantically that it felt like every one of his veins would burst open. "O-oh god…"

"W-what is it?" Sid yelped. He rushed over to the nickit, picking up the letter. His eyes narrowed. "I… don't understand, Rasky. What's so bad about–"

"The fight, Sid, the fight!" Raskin shouted the words, then realised their neighbours may well have heard. The only other tone of voice he seemed able to manage in this state was a whisper. "The police, they, they must have found out somehow. I was trying to get everyone to be careful about discussing it, but clearly… oh, Mew…"

Sid scratched his head for a moment. "I mean, maybe it's about that. But if the police _had_ heard, why would their first response be to send a letter? And why would it come in the exact same format as those letters about your dad?" He chuckled. "Rasky, have you ever heard of the police arresting someone by sending them a _letter_?

"W-well…" Raskin saw his logic, but it didn't do much to calm his trembling paws.

"Look, you want me to open it?" Sid asked, pinching the letter out of his grip.

Raskin opened his mouth to protest, though could think of no good excuse. "Oh, alright," he sighed.

Sid tore a messy opening in the top of the envelope and unfolded the paper, looking over the words intently. He was never the fastest reader.

"Well? What does it say?" Raskin demanded, his tail swishing with impatience.

"Nothing to do with you-know-what," Sid said immediately, flashing him a smile. "It's… actually some pretty good news." He carefully passed the letter over. "Your dad's sentence is getting cut."

Raskin's eyes darted over the page, the breath he had been holding slowly escaping. _Due to convict Mightyena's high standard of behaviour since his sentence began,_ it read, _we have decided to reduce his remaining jail time. Whereas he previously had one year left to serve, he will now serve six months._

There was a knot of legal mumbo-jumbo written below that he didn't have the energy to untangle yet. He read the same paragraph over and over. Though he felt extreme relief at its contents, the elation that he supposed should accompany it did not follow.

There were several reasons why, he supposed. The cold-blooded manner of the police always rubbed him the wrong way. How they referred to his father only as _Mightyena_ rather than his first name. That impersonality would be fine if Haikos was superior to the entire Deepden police force, but as the opposite was true, it was difficult not to interpret the name as an insult.

Then there was Haikos himself. Though prisoners in his position could be visited once a month, it had been several since Raskin's last trip. About a year ago, when the nickit still came as often as possible, Haikos had told him not to worry about it. " _I appreciate you coming, but I can see it's a burden for you,"_ the mightyena had said. He was right, of course, and Raskin _had_ felt a little more at ease once he started keeping thoughts of his father at arms' length.

But reading the letter brought it home how much he had neglected Haikos. He knew that if he didn't choose to visit now—never mind the fact that news of his father's reduced sentence made a perfect reason for it—he didn't know when he would again before the 'mon was released.

* * *

The following morning, Raskin got a ride towards the south end of the city. It was a long journey, taking him through countless high streets, housing estates and industrial parks, but finally the arcanine stopped on the street he wanted.

It was essentially a dead end out here: the road only looped back around towards the centre of Deepden again. Squat, yellowing grass flanked it on both sides. The only thing of any note in sight was a vast, redbrick square, kept behind an even larger chain-link fence, securing it from every side. Deepden Prison.

The door into the compound was made of the same material. It was closed, and on the other side two officers, a jolteon and fraxure, were sitting on stools, playing cards. They were laughing about something as Raskin approached, and when neither appeared to notice him, he loudly cleared his throat. He would have knocked on the fence, were it not for the myriad of warning signs around it with diagrams of figures being electrocuted.

The guards turned their heads. "Yeah, what?" the jolteon said. Despite it still being early, his white scarf was only hanging loosely around his neck.

"I'm here to visit family," Raskin said.

"Uh-huh," the jolteon replied dully. He ambled to his feet, opening the gate with his forepaws rather than pressing the button that did it automatically—a feeble attempt for the electric-type to show off his immunity, Raskin guessed. "Follow Fraxure here."

Raskin did so without a word. He had never encountered a police officer here that treated him as if he wasn't a complete waste of their time.

The fraxure led him to the reception, where he gave his usual details, waited in a cold, metal chair for a few minutes, then was called forward. A liepard officer led him down a dimly-lit corridor which was made of the same dull bricks as everything else, stopping at a door that was now familiar to him. She ushered him inside.

The room was empty but for a table and single chair, both of the same uncompromising metal, set up against a section of wall that had replaced the bricks with laminated glass. On the other side of the glass, in a seemingly identical room, sat his father.

To call it sitting would have been misleading: the mightyena was slumped back against his chair, his front legs barely resting at the edge of the table, mostly just hanging in the air. While the anatomy of most quadrupeds didn't work naturally for sitting at a table, they were trained to _make_ it work from an early age. Three years in prison seemed to have made Haikos forget his training.

When he saw Raskin, Haikos at least made an effort to straighten his upper body, though his legs still sat on the table, almost between his head.

"Hello, Dad," Raskin began. _Not even a greeting in and I'm already anxious,_ he thought, cursing. _Something about this place makes it impossible to talk._ He took his own seat on the other side of the glass.

"'ello, Rass," Haikos replied, his voice as rough as sandpaper.

"Well, how are you?" Raskin asked. "It's been a while since my last visit. Sorry about that. Life has been busy, and…"

Haikos grunted, waving off his excuse with a paw. "Don't apologise." An uncomfortable silence hovered over them before his father coughed, then croaked on. "Not much to tell ya. Inmates come and gone, same as usual. Few fights breakin' out amongst the young'r folk who don't know better. I just keep my head down. Ain't much else you can do."

Raskin inspected his father a little closer. The black fur on his back and legs was turning more and more like the grey that otherwise covered him – but that discolouration was typical for species like his. More alarming was how thin and patchy all his fur had become. Without the coverings on Haikos's legs, Raskin half-expected to find twigs underneath.

"Are they feeding you enough?" he asked. "You look thin."

Haikos puffed out his cheeks. "If you had to eat the slop they served up here, you'd be thin too."

"That's not an excuse, Dad!" Raskin exclaimed, leaning forward on the table. "You have to keep yourself healthy. Especially given…" He paused. "I got a letter saying your sentence is being cut to six months. Were you aware of that?"

"Oh, yeah," Haikos grunted. "It happens 'round here a lot. Nothin' special. In fact, I'd bet that's what they'd planned for me from the start. Funny what they class as good behaviour, ay?" He coughed out what was presumably a laugh.

Raskin glanced behind him. The liepard officer was nowhere to be seen "Why would they plan it deliberately?" he asked.

Haikos shrugged. "If people think they'll be in here years, they'll get behaved quicker, I reckon. No point in suffering the consequences for an eternity."

 _Mew, can you hear yourself, Dad?_ Raskin thought despairingly. He had to change topic.

"But still, six months. That's something to look forward to, right?"

The mightyena frowned back at him. "Is it? They'll assign me somewhere to live, and I'll have to go back to work. Gods know how, with these joints of mine…"

"What? No! I thought you could live with us… Sid and I."

"Oh." For the first time, Haikos's eyes opened a little wider. "Are you sure you could afford that?"

Raskin froze. Of course; why had he just assumed that would work? Haikos was twice the size of he or Sid, so should—if he was to stop looking like an underfed tyrogue—be eating twice as much too. Running some quick mental sums, Raskin could see it being possible… but it would take a new level of frugality for him and Sid. Unless Haikos got a job, of course, but Raskin desperately did not want him to be cleaning toilets or sweeping streets. His father probably only had a few more years to live; he deserved better than that.

"I… I'm not sure," Raskin admitted, lowering his gaze. "I guess we'll wait and see. Half a year is still a long time." _Even though my life has been static for the past two of those._

Haikos nodded vaguely, returning to his slumped posture. Raskin scrambled for something else to say, something positive. He would feel awful if he left Haikos like this.

Then his mind landed on it, like a wayward arrow suddenly finding its target. He checked behind him: the liepard officer was chatting to someone at the door, not even looking his way. Perfect.

He leaned forwards until his muzzle was almost smudging the glass. Haikos raised his eyelids, his ears pricking upwards.

"Something exciting happened the other day. Sid and I managed to organise a kind of… underground street fight. We held it away from the—"

"You did WHAT?" Haikos barked, suddenly lurching upright.

The liepard poked her head in, alerted by the explosion of noise. Raskin was stunned, though regained enough composure to turn and give the officer what he hoped was a reassuring look. Once her attention eased, he turned back to Haikos, but his father spoke first, managing to keep his voice hushed.

"That's illegal, Raskin!"

"I know it is!" Raskin yelped. "But we planned it all carefully, dad. No one suspected a thing. We even made some money from it!"

"You…" A low growl buzzed from his father's throat, and he shook his head sharply. "You will never do _anything_ like this again, do you understand?"

"We weren't planning to!" Raskin felt his face heat up. "It was just a bit of fun. What's your problem?"

" _That_ is what my problem is! A bit of fun… I didn't raise you to be this stupid! Have you forgotten all the sacrifices I made for you, Raskin? How I always believed in you? You could have thrown that all away over a pointless fight!"

Raskin didn't know how to respond. He hadn't seen Haikos this animated since they had still lived under the same roof. In that sense, it was reassuring to know that the mightyena had not been completely consumed by the void of sadness which seemed to grow deeper every time Raskin saw him.

But what hit him harder were the force of Haikos's words. Because his father was right; he had made the ultimate sacrifice, even if the prison part of it was undesired. Haikos had been caught lying about his income on their tax forms, attempting to pay less than he was obligated to. Although he had never blamed Raskin for his actions, the nickit couldn't interpret them any other way. After all, it was his stubbornness in attempting to find a job better than the menial, lowest-paid that were normally given out to 'mon lacking formal qualifications, and his months of failure in doing so, that had led to his father's desperate act. The irony of it was that his interview at the bank had been the morning of the day they had received a knock on the door from that white-scarfed officer.

"I'll never forgive myself for doing this to you," Raskin said quietly, unable to meet Haikos's eye.

The mightyena sighed, slumping back into his previous position on the uncompromising chair. "I did not intend to make you feel guilty, boy. I just think… you need to stay focused. Stay in your job. Do not get impatient. Life… has a way of working things out."

 _Well, it didn't work out for you,_ Raskin thought.

A sharp knock came from the door. "That's time," the liepard said, walking into the room, though it was only possible to take a couple of steps with its size. She gestured the exit to Raskin.

He looked at Haikos once more, longing to send him off with something worthwhile. But in the end, all he could manage was, "I'll see you soon."

With a grunt and jerk of his head, Haikos was led away by another officer back towards the cells. Raskin wondered how 'soon' his heart could really manage.

* * *

The following evening, Raskin joined Sid in heading to the White Entei, the quilava's favourite haunt on Harmony Square. Being a Sunday, it was pleasantly quiet in the pub – the type of quietness that made conversation easy to follow, rather than uncomfortable.

Raskin was not particularly good friends with the pokémon that Sid drank with, but they were entertaining and jovial, and of course a touch of alcohol made everything come easier. By the time they left, later than was sensible for Sid especially, Raskin felt a little happier about the world.

It was just a shame that weekends ended so soon.

His hope that the weekend would have given everyone at the bank time to calm down was only partially met. True, none of the 'mon made suspicion-arousing comments to him while in the office. But he kept getting knowing looks from around the room, and at lunch, once again, a few people asked him what he was thinking for the next fight. Aware that repeating the same answers would probably not go down well, he said that he needed to discuss their options with Sid—his 'partner in crime', as one 'mon put it—before they went any further. That seemed just about enough to sate everyone's curiosity for another day.

 _What will I do tomorrow, though?_ Raskin wondered, as the time crawled towards five that afternoon. _Make up a discussion with Sid that will sound agreeable to people?_

He glanced at the clock again. Ten minutes to five. Just one more balance sheet and he would be done. He turned to the next page of his papers and began a new table on the computer. _Withdrawals… 50, 20, 50… 100…_

"Raskin?"

Raskin's ears stood on end. It was Pangoro's gravelly voice. He turned to find his boss standing there, with his grey scarf, a reminder of his authority, fastened tightly around his close-cropped fur. "A quick word, if you would," Pangoro said.

Raskin froze. There was no way he could refuse. His mind began whirring at once. _Could Pangoro have heard about the fight? Surely he would have found out before now, if he did?_

Slowly, he turned, sliding off his chair, and followed Pangoro through the open door to the manager's office. It was immaculately tidy, Pangoro's papers and pens lined up with precision; the only detail somewhat out of place was a stress ball, whose pink colour had faded from so much use. Pangoro seemed to squeeze it most hours of the day.

"What's up?" Raskin said, as casually as he could, sitting in the open seat opposite Pangoro.

The manager brought his paws together on the desk. "As you know, Raskin, the bank has been in a transitionary period of late. The collective focus from your department on what is, admittedly, a rather menial task has been very much appreciated."

Raskin nodded. "Is… that why I'm here?"

"No," Pangoro said grimly. "The bottom line is, once all our data is online, and your department can input consumer figures as they come in, like before, its workload will be significantly reduced. It wouldn't be economically viable to continue employing so many of you. Now, you've been at the bank for some time, and that loyalty is very much appreciated. However, I've run some numbers on everyone's performances over the last couple of weeks and, to be frank, yours are the worst."

Raskin blinked at him. _Run some numbers…? These computers tell him how much work everyone's been doing?_

"I can work harder," he said quickly. "I'll work harder than anyone."

Pangoro tilted his head slightly, then continued as if Raskin had never spoken. "I spoke to a few of your colleagues about this, and they agreed that you've cut a rather surly figure in recent weeks."

 _What?_ Sure, that was how he _felt_ , but Raskin always made an effort to appear respectable. Besides, everyone loved him now! They wouldn't say that about him, would they?

"I–" he began, but Pangoro interrupted.

"In addition, I have grounds to believe that the day off with illness you took last week was a complete fabrication. It seems to me, Raskin, that you have no real desire to continue working here, and one of the keys to high productivity is for everyone to be in the same headspace. It only takes one rower to start slacking for the whole balance of the boat to collapse."

Raskin could barely stop his mouth falling open in disbelief. One of the reasons he had travelled to the bakeries at the crack of dawn was so that no one from the bank would see him. Pangoro himself didn't show up until half-an-hour after his department.

He wanted to scream at Pangoro. He wanted to break apart those stupid pencils of his, sweep his paws into all those trivial papers.

What came out of his mouth wasn't far off.

"You can't fire me for this," he said. "I'll take you to court over it. Firing someone based on a few office rumours is grounds for wrongful dismissal."

"I never said we were firing you," Pangoro said, a flicker of amusement passing over his lips. He passed a document across the desk. "You should take a look at this. It's a redundancy settlement we drew up. You'll receive just under 2000 poké altogether; we hope that gives quite sufficient time for you to find a new job. Your planned redundancy begins at the end of this working week, four days from now. You have until then to decide whether to sign."

Raskin looked carefully at the paper. What Pangoro was _actually_ offering was 1700 poké. That would keep him afloat for what, two months? Would that be enough to find another job?

"What happens if I refuse to sign?" he asked Pangoro.

Pangoro narrowed his eyes. "I don't think you'll get very far in appealing a redundancy."

 _Obviously._ Raskin felt foolish for even asking. The bank had it all worked out, those slippery bastards. He snatched the paper off the desk. "There's no way that you might reverse this within the next week?"

"I cannot see that happening." After a moment of silence, Pangoro added, "Unless you have anything else to say, that will be all. Again, you have four days to make a decision."

" _Decision_ ," Raskin repeated, laced with sarcasm. When Pangoro's glare intensified, he deduced that his fury was best left bottled up. "I'll just go then."

Pangoro nodded, and Raskin left the office without another word.

* * *

Raskin's journey home was like wading through honey. Walking though the vast, bustling streets, the city felt greyer and bleaker to him than ever.

He had held down his job at the bank for over two years. It was the only job he had had since leaving school. Back then, every day had been the same: in the morning he would scan the vacancies section of the newspaper and write hasty applications for any vacancy that looked achievable enough, which usually amounted to about half a dozen. In the afternoon he would walk down Deepden's high streets, looking for any notices of vacancies in the shop windows. Almost every inquiry was turned down without even an interview. Job centres told him that, with his lack of qualifications, he was aiming too high: there were plenty of jobs available for factory workers, or cleaners, or harvesters like Sid. But he had been stubborn, believing he could do better. So had his father.

 _Dad was right,_ Raskin thought miserably. He recalled the mightyena's words in their last meeting: ' _Stay focused. Stay in your job.'_

 _But I have!_ he told himself. _For two years I've done nothing else!_

He doubted that anyone in his department truly had their mind on numbers for every hour of work. And at least he was competent at his job; Locki was still forgetting coding functions! How could he have been singled out by Pangoro?

 _Locki._ His mind landed on the skitty. She was the only member of the office who he reckoned would seriously disapprove of their fight night. What if she had suspected something was up? For all Raskin had tried to keep everyone quiet about it, she could still have picked up enough clues to be suspicious.

She should have no concrete proof to incriminate him with—nothing that the police would be onto him for—but she could have told Pangoro of her suspicions. Perhaps suspicions were enough for Pangoro to feel he should be let go. Pangoro could make up a couple of excuses involving productivity, and fire him under the guise of redundancy so Raskin was powerless to prevent it.

 _Oh, but what does it matter how it happened?_ Raskin thought, as he left the transport station on Harmony Square. _It's over. I'll have to start all over again…_

He wondered how Sid would react. For as long as Raskin had known the quilava, which was almost all his life, he had always seen himself as the responsible, reliable one of them. Sid could be erratic and unpredictable, but Raskin would always make sure their bills were paid. Perhaps those days were over.

He was so deep in thought that when he opened the door and found Sid on the sofa, looking at him, he froze.

The quilava's eyes were puffy and bloodshot. His paws were shaking, despite the cushion that he was clutching to his body like a life raft.

"Sid!" Raskin exclaimed, all his troubles forgotten. "W-what's wrong?"

"Well… this." The quilava picked up an official-looking document and handed it to him. "The greenhouse is laying me off."


	5. Digging

Raskin stared at Sid. " _You_ lost your job?"

Sid frowned at him. "Yeah. Why do you sound so confused?"

"I mean—um, I'm sorry." The nickit sat down on the other side of the sofa. They didn't have any other furniture to choose from, other than the two rickety chairs at the tiny kitchen table. "How did it happen?"

"It was pretty weird, really," Sid muttered. "I was going about my usual work, when our supervisor came over and said Sceptile wanted to see me. I've only met with the boss like, twice, in all the years I've been there. We sat down in her office, and firstly she thanked me for all the work I'd done on her watch… which already made me a bit suspicious. Then she said that my sector is going to start testing out some new kinda machines soon, and if it goes well, we won't need as many manual workers."

"Then what? She said you were one of the least productive workers, or something like that?"

Sid raised an eyebrow. "Pretty much exactly. How'd you guess?"

Raskin swore under his breath. _I knew it._

"I don't understand it though," Sid went on, his voice slowly rising in pitch. "Sure, I don't _enjoy_ the work, but I never slack off while I'm on the clock! There's no way I'm the least productive—I don't have to take as many water breaks as the non-fires, for starters!"

"Sid, I think I know what's going on," Raskin said. "Listen."

He briefly explained his own encounter with Pangoro.

"What?!" Sid yelped the moment Raskin reached the crux of their meeting. "You're being made redundant too? How can that be?"

Raskin sighed, looking at the floor. There suddenly felt like a huge weight on his shoulders. "Let me just… get a beer," he said, getting up. "You want one?"

"Uh… yeah, alright."

Raskin carried a bottle in each paw, walking in his bipedal stance before collapsing back on the sofa. Well, he wished he could _collapse_ on it. The cheap material was barely softer than the wooden floor beneath it.

He took a long gulp from his bottle, and took a moment more to compose himself, welcoming the little bit of warmth in his stomach that the alcohol provided. "I don't think we were careful enough in organising the fight, Sid," he said at last. "Word must have gotten out somehow that we were involved in something illegal, and the people in power decided from that that they couldn't employ us anymore."

Sid took a moment to digest this. "Are you… are you sure?" he said slowly. "I mean, couldn't this timing just be a crazy coincidence?"

"Maybe it could, but it isn't," Raskin said firmly. "Look, neither of us were fired, only made redundant. Why? Because there was no hard evidence to fire us with, only rumours. Neither of the reasonings given for firing us made much sense, either—because they were essentially made up on the fly to cover for the flimsy _actual_ reasoning."

Sid's face screwed up. "I still don't understand why they'd have to let us go. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to pull us to one side and say, 'hey, I've been hearing these rumours about you, don't do anything like it again or you'll be properly punished'?"

Raskin nodded. "I've been thinking about that too. All I can imagine is that none of these bosses want to get on the wrong side of the government." He sighed. "Maybe they're worried that if anything more serious happened to us, they could be implicated just by employing us."

"Maybe they have links to the government themselves," Sid added.

Raskin looked at him, surprised. "That might also be true."

He wasn't sure what else to say about it, though—there was nothing they could change about the situation, after all. The conversation lulled, and for a while, Raskin did nothing but stare down the beer bottle, taking sips. He couldn't afford to drink silly amounts, especially not now. _Mew, even beer is depressing me._

He only stirred again when Sid nudged his shoulder. "Everything okay, Rasky?" the quilava asked, leaning towards him, concerned.

Raskin felt his mouth quiver for a moment. "How can you ask that? Aren't you worried about… about what we're gonna do now? Neither of us have jobs, Sid! We got some settlement money, sure, but that won't last. I… I don't know what I'll do. I don't have any career to fall back on, no parents to rely on…"

"You have your work experience with the bank," Sid offered. "That has to count for something."

"If I wanted another shitty bank job, maybe," Raskin muttered. He pulled his ears down over his face, the feeling of despair in his chest rapidly rising again. "Sometimes, I dream of there just being…. somewhere _else_ to go. Somewhere far from Deepden, where there isn't a police officer around every corner, and I don't spend every other waking second checking that I can still pay this month's rent."

He saw Sid frown in his periphery. "You mean like… the Wilderness?"

Raskin sighed. "That doesn't count."

"Well, where else? The land to the south is completely barren."

"I don't know, Sid. It was only a stupid dream."

They said nothing for a moment.

"Y'know, I _was_ doing some thinking before you arrived," Sid said, sitting up. His tone of voice seemed far too upbeat for the situation. "And I guess that idea makes even _more_ sense now."

"And what idea would that be?" Raskin snapped.

"Simple: we organise more fights!"

Raskin stared at him, stunned and horrified, but Sid only grinned back.

"Think about it, 'mon. We made 200 poké first time around, but it could have been at least double that. Double, split between us, would have been a week's worth of pay for us both! And think: what would happen if we organised _two_ fights a week? Or even three? We'd be raking it in!"

"Sid, doing that stupid fight is why we're in this mess at all! Hell, it was _my idea_! I'm responsible for all of this."

"Don't say that," Sid said. He looked seriously at Raskin. "It was a brilliant idea, Rasky. Still is. You saw how well it went down."

"Because it was illegal!"

"Fine, then we'll just have to cover our tracks better than last time." A wry smile spread across Sid's mouth. "In _theory_ , it should be safer now, since we don't have jobs to be taken away from us…"

"Don't be stupid—we still have tons of things to lose! We have the apartment. Our families. And besides, how would we organise all these fights? We don't possibly have the resources for that!"

That made Sid pause. The quilava stroked his head fur. Then his eyes suddenly lit up – his flame sacs even gave a brief spark. "Our redundancy pay! That's more than we'd ever be able to save up normally— _there's_ our resources! It'll pay itself back faster than a pidgeot in flight if we can get this thing up and running."

Raskin fiddled with his paws. If he could ignore all the perilous implications of running more fights, Sid made good points. The first fight had been a sensational success on most levels. If, somehow, they were able to upscale the whole operation, get it running smoothly and regularly, keep the money flowing to him and Sid, and keep the cops well away…

Then he thought of his last meeting with Haikos, and his heart sank. His father would be mortified if he were listening to them now.

But there was also the matter of Haikos' impending freedom. Maybe, if he and Sid could pull off fights consistently, they would make enough to afford Haikos the time off he deserved. It didn't sound likely, sure, but neither did earning any greater money through regular jobs.

Raskin glanced up. Sid was still looking eagerly at him.

 _Right—think of how happy doing this would make Sid. He loved the first event so much._ His friend's wellbeing mattered as much as anyone in his life. Particularly given how it had been lately.

"I'll… sleep on it," Raskin said finally.

"Great!" Sid beamed, then the smile faltered. "Uh—do you still have work tomorrow?"

"Until the end of the week."

"Oh, same as me."

They exchanged a look, and Raskin could tell that if Sid hadn't believed what he had said about their redundancies before, there was no doubt now.

"Well…" Sid scratched his head. "Goodnight, then."

* * *

What did it really mean, Raskin wondered, to 'sleep on' a thought? Did it imply that for any dilemma, a good night's sleep would make the answer magically jump out at you? Or did it mean, as was the case for him, that instead of sleeping you would merely spend all night mulling over the thought, to the point where you just wanted to give in to the difficult, but seemingly best decision?

Sid was already gone when he finally rose. That was fine—he could send the quilava a note should he need to. In fact, it was perhaps beneficial not to immediately fill Sid in on the idea he'd had. He could already hear the quilava's complaints in his head.

Once he had gotten ready for work, he quickly scrawled a different note and headed to the post office. After getting to the front of another absurdly long queue, he found himself face-to-face with the same sandshrew as the last time.

"Hello," Raskin began. "I've got a note here that—"

"Doesn't have an address," the sandshrew finished, eyeing the paper disdainfully.

"Well yes, that's what I need help with. I have a recipient in mind, but I don't know where she lives."

"Uh-huh," the sandshrew said. "You know her name?"

"Yes. Lyco."

"Species?"

"Lycanroc. The red-furred kind."

"So, N." The sandshrew wheeled her chair to the opposite side of her desk, where a shiny new computer sat. She typed something in, then waited a moment. Raskin watched her eyes narrow.

"You said 'Lyco'?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She shook her head. "There's no one of that name in our records."

Raskin blinked at her. "There must be!"

The sandshrew shrugged, taking a sip from a coffee cup. "Take a look yourself if you want."

Raskin slipped through the gap in the counter, feeling increasingly conscious of the impatient queue's grumblings behind him. The computer screen showed a list of a handful of names: _Percy Lycanroc-N, Luna Lycanroc-N, Pita Lycanroc-N…_

But the 'shrew was right: Lyco was not amongst them. There didn't even seem to be a name that Lyco could be derived from.

"Could you search for rockruff?" Raskin asked. "Maybe she just Shifted recently."

The sandshrew eyed him suspiciously. "The search automatically factors in possible form changes. The only other thing I could do is search for her name specifically."

She typed 'Lyco' into a search bar. Again, it took an awkward few seconds for the machine to process the request. A Lyco did eventually appear, but it belonged to a litten. Then another to a zigzagoon. No other results came up.

Raskin felt exasperated. _She built a house in the roughest part of civilisation, she knows way too much about fighting, her name isn't on any Deepden records… goddammit, who_ are _you, Lyco?_

"How much would it cost to send a letter to every lycanroc-N in your records?" he asked hopefully.

The sandshrew scoffed. "There's no way I can licence that."

"What? Why not?"

The sandshrew turned to him, her face suddenly serious. "Look, I don't know what your business with this lady is. But the fact that you don't know her name _or_ address, yet would be willing to bother every other lycan in the city _just_ in the hopes of passing on a message to her… it's more than a little fishy."

"Hey, it's not like I'm harassing her—" Raskin began, then stopped himself. A few 'mon near the front of the queue were looking at him suspiciously. The sandshrew's words were loud enough to be overheard.

Raskin took a deep breath. _I've got enough to worry about already._ "Okay," he said, with forced calmness. "Sorry for wasting your time." He strode away and out of the post office, not making any eye contact.

_Great. What do I do now? Lyco was the best idea I had. I hope Sid's been thinking too, otherwise—_

He suddenly became aware of a scent nearby. It came at him so strongly, and was so familiar, that it cut through every other part of his consciousness like a knife.

Heart racing, he spun his head around the busy street until he found the source. It wasn't what he expected. Sitting on the ground against the side of a building, a blanket full of holes and odd stitched colours half covering him, as well as a cardboard tray with a few coins strewn inside. The nidoran from Oldden.

Their eyes met at the same time. The nidoran instinctively jerked backwards in surprise, but then relaxed, even breaking out a wide grin.

"Hey, nickit!" he said. "Still achin' from when I bashed you up the other day?"

Raskin blinked. Hadn't this 'mon attacked him and Sid with barely a moment's thought? He had feared something similar again, as insane that would be on a high street in broad daylight. At least the 'mon had some sense about him, if only a little.

He still shuddered to think about what might have been had Lyco not burst to their rescue. The nidoran's horn had been one swipe away from piercing Sid with what looked like…

_Lyco._

He regarded the nidoran, who still grinned, then stepped closer so he could keep his voice down.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

The nidoran looked deliberately at his coin tray, then back to the nickit with narrowed eyes. "What's it look like?"

Raskin gritted his teeth. "I mean, you shouldn't be here! What if an officer finds you?"

The nidoran shrugged. "They don't patrol this part 'till later. What d'you care, anyway?"

 _Enough beating around the bush, then,_ Raskin thought.

"Nidoran, I know this is sudden, but I need your help with something."

The nidoran stared at him for a moment, then erupted into laughter—a scratchy, shrill noise that almost made Raskin's head throb. This did draw the glances of passers-by, much to his irritation.

"What could I possibly do for ya, little nickit?" the nidoran said.

Raskin ignored the taunt in his tone. "I need to find Lyco," he said. The nidoran's smile dropped immediately at her name, which made Raskin stumble for a moment. "But... I don't know how. And I don't want to spend days waiting hopefully in Oldden for her. You know her, right? Do you have any idea where she lives?"

"I doubt I'll ever find _that_ out," the nidoran said, suddenly serious, "but I do know where she works."

"That could do."

"But you got another thing comin' if you expect that information for free," the nidoran added, smiling wryly. "'Specially if she's as important to you as it seems."

Raskin sighed. Money, that great leveller. "How much do you want?"

The nidoran thought for a second. "Twenty."

" _Twenty_?" Raskin barely managed to contain his fury and disbelief. _I could get a ride anywhere in the city for two, you bastard!_ "No way."

The nidoran shrugged. "Take it or leave it."

Raskin stared at him. _He_ was supposed to negotiate with that? "Ten," he said reluctantly.

"Fifteen," the nidoran replied.

"Twelve."

"Fifteen, _and_ I'll even walk ya there myself," the nidoran said, looking more smug than ever.

 _Is that even a good thing?_ Raskin frowned. _No, that's short-sighted of me. Knowing Lyco, she'll_ still _be somewhere unexpected. At least if this guy's with us, I can hold him to finding her._

Fifteen poké… it went against every frugal fibre of his being. But there seemed little choice if he wanted Lyco's help.

"Fine."

"Great!" the nidoran beamed. "How 'bout I take you there now?"

"I need to head to work. I was planning on finding her afterwards."

"I see. Well, I can meet ya there. Where 'bouts you work?"

Raskin hesitated. That _would_ make life easier, he supposed. "The bank on Amity Street."

"Ooooh, posh," the nidoran said. "I'll see ya when you're out, then. Have fun!"

Raskin nodded. He noticed then that the nidoran's paw was still extended towards him, expectant, and he scowled. "I'll pay you when we find her, and nothing before."

* * *

Eight and a half hours later, Raskin stepped out of the bank. At times like these, he cursed his smallness. The street was as crowded as ever on a weekday evening, and standing on the bank's steps for visibility wasn't an option, given it wouldn't close for another hour.

He eventually decided on a nook in-between the bank and an office block next door that loomed just as tall. He was surprised to see Sid already waiting there.

"Evening," Sid said with a smile. "How was work? What's this plan you've got lined up for us?"

"Well…" Raskin began, then changed his mind. "Sorry, shouldn't you still be at work?"

Sid grinned. "Yeeeah, I should… but I snuck off when the supervisors weren't around. I'm leaving in four days—I don't need to play by their rules anymore, y'know?"

Raskin shut his eyes in frustration. "Yes, you _do._ We're relying on this redundancy money. Don't give your bosses any excuse to take that away."

Sid huffed. "It's only an hour of work, dude, relax. Anyway, you wanna let me in on this plan? I knew you would come round to my idea," he added, giving the nickit a friendly nudge.

Before Raskin could find the best way to explain, the nidoran's scent found his nostrils again, piercing through the more innocuous odours of passers-by. Judging by the rapid movements around Sid's muzzle, he had noticed it too.

The nidoran came into view a moment later, weaving through the street towards them.

"Rasky," Sid muttered, a low growl brewing in his throat as he faced the nidoran. "What is _he_ doing here?"

"He's going to take us to Lyco," Raskin said.

" _Lyco_?!" Sid's voice could hardly reach a higher pitch. "Rasky, what… what the hell have you been planning today?"

"Just… trust me," Raskin said, hoping his calmness would diffuse over to the quilava. "I've thought a lot about how to make these fights a reality, and it seemed Lyco was the best place to start."

Sid still looked sceptical, but didn't pester any further for now.

The nidoran finally stood in front of them. He now wore a reedy shoulder bag, though the strap was ill-fitting, making it swing like a pendulum against his side. His smile was as wide as Raskin's ears.

"Evenin'," he nodded. "Good to see ya again, mister smokey-cough."

Sid, to his credit, didn't fall for the bait. "At least I can afford a bath more than once a year," he snapped.

That wiped some of the smugness of the nidoran's face. "Whatever," he shrugged. "Let's get on with it, eh? This walk'll take a while."

For a while, Raskin and Sid followed the 'mon in silence. The nidoran seemed to lead them exclusively through the darkest, narrowest paths available, regardless of their efficiency. Raskin struggled to locate where they were going, but from the receding noise it had to be somewhere on the city's outskirts.

"Say, I never introduced myself," the nidoran said after a while. "Name's Tyler."

"Sid," the quilava said, adding venomously, "Now we're acquainted, maybe you could explain why you attacked Raskin in Oldden."

Tyler chuckled. "You're still upset about that?"

" _Still_? When should I stop?"

Tyler stopped, the first time all journey, and turned to them. His smile was replaced with a grim snarl—he looked much more like the 'mon Raskin knew from that day.

"Look, mate, I don't know what pampered, fancy fucking district of this city you grew up in," he spat. "But Oldden don't play by those rules. If two 'mon have a disagreement, they don't go to the authority. _Fighting_ is the authority."

"We didn't have a disagreement, though," Raskin pointed out. "I just opened the door."

That made Tyler falter, and Raskin added, "It wasn't even your property we walked into. What were you doing in Lyco's house, anyway?"

Tyler scowled at him for a moment, then turned away. "It can get real cold in Oldden," he muttered. "Lyco's house is the nicest place to sleep. And she don't normally show up until the evening."

He started walking again. The path they were on now had no cover, but was also almost deserted, with only the occasional ride pokémon or purposeful-looking civilian. It was dustier here, too. Everything had gained a slight yellow hue.

Raskin was not surprised by Tyler's answer. He still had some curiosities, though, and doubted he would ever get a better chance than this to find answers. He just hoped Sid didn't get too annoyed with him for conversing with the enemy.

"Tyler, why do you live in Oldden? Why does anyone?"

Tyler snorted. "You mean, instead of getting thrown in one of them housing blocks in exchange for community service?"

"Right. I mean, at least there you get food, a roof over your head—"

"Access to a shower," Sid added.

"…and that."

"Yeah, but for _what_?" Tyler said. "There's nothing enjoyable about that life. Yer nothing more than a slave to the government."

"And starving out in Oldden is better?"

"Yes!" Tyler snapped. He stopped, a growl rising in his throat. Then he shook his head. "I dunno… I like the culture of Oldden. The fights for good ground. The scavenging for food…"

He trailed off, his voice uncertain.

Raskin felt like he understood, though. "Perhaps you should stick around when we meet Lyco, Tyler. You might be interested in what I want to talk about."

Raskin felt Sid's eyes burn into him, as if they could set on fire like his flame sacs. But Tyler just glanced back at him, unable to hide his surprise. "Why would I be interested?"

"It involves lots of fighting."

Tyler chuckled. "It does? Maybe yer right. Oh—we're here, by the way."

Raskin suddenly jerked his head up to look around. He'd almost forgotten what they were walking for.

About 20 metres ahead of them, the ground seemed to simply fall off a cliff. The road ended on this corner, and the only building in sight was a concrete booth at the cliff's edge, which a geodude sat inside. As they walked closer, Raskin could make out little moving dots far below. Faint sounds of banging and clanging drifted up to them.

He felt like slapping himself. _A mine. Of course a lycanroc works at a mine!_

"So, mate," Tyler said casually, "how 'bout that money you owe?"

"Not yet," Raskin replied. "I can't see Lyco from here. Can you?"

Tyler _hmphed,_ then made his way towards the geodude.

They were told the day shift would finish shortly, but as it 'wasn't recommended' for people to wait outside the mine like they were, Raskin paid two poké for them to get the lift underground. The nickit wondered if this day could possibly get any more needlessly expensive.

The lift opened to reveal a huge room carved in the rock. Several rows of benches—their heights varied to account for different sized species—stretched almost endlessly in front of them. One wall was crammed with lockers, while the opposite side had stacks of trays and bowls that suggested a cafeteria, though the area was vacated now.

Tyler whistled in admiration. "Damn. This ain't half bad."

"Let's just find Lyco before we admire the mining industry," Raskin said, nudging the nidoran onwards.

The room ended with a glass wall, a huge window into the mines, which were much closer at this level. Raskin leant against the glass with his front paws and peered over the edge. The various groups of pokémon there must have numbered in the hundreds. Some were surveying the ground, muzzles pressed up against the rock surface. Others—it looked like mostly steel pokémon—were sorting through vast piles of rubble, taking and discarding rocks in no clear pattern.

"There!" Sid said, pointing. "She's getting out of that machine!"

Raskin followed his directions, then his heart jumped a little as he found the lycanroc. Lyco was indeed stepping down from one of the enormous, motorised vehicles that picked up chunks of rock in its scooped mouth. He couldn't help wondering, _who even thought up a monster like that?_

As she got out, a screeching whistle sounded through the glass. Every other worker stopped, some wincing, and started to leave their stations. Lyco had apparently foreseen this, being one of the first to get on the lifts taking them back to the glass doors. That meant she had a clear view of the 'mon at the window.

Her eyes shot open, then narrowed, then burned with fury.

She lurched towards the doors, shoving them open before anyone else. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. She turned on Tyler. "How did you know where I worked?"

Tyler laughed, a little more nervous than he seemed to intend. "Knowledge is power, y'know."

"Oh, _shut up_." Lyco eyed Raskin next. He noticed the coating of dust on her fur that she seemed to have no interest in clearing. "Was this your idea?"

"Well, I wanted to talk with you," Raskin said, trying to keep his voice steady. "But I didn't know how to find you, given you said you didn't… _live_ in Oldden."

"Well, you've found me now. What do you want?"

There was now a steady stream of people leaving the mines, many of whom watched the group of them as they went by with considerable interest. Raskin felt uneasy. "Is there anywhere more private we can go than here?"

Lyco thought for a second. "Yes, but you'd better not have a whole presentation for me. We shouldn't stick around past closing time."

"We'll be quick about it," Raskin agreed.

Lyco led them to the cafeteria side of the room, pressed some buttons on a keypad, opening the door beside it, and Raskin found himself in a deserted kitchen.

Lyco leant against the nearest work surface, arms folded. "Here we are."

Raskin felt awfully small standing next to her and Sid, with the quilava on two legs to meet her at almost head height. He located a low wooden stool in the corner of the room and dragged it over until he could sit opposite them. That was better.

"In short," he began. "Sid and I want to run more fights. I think there was more than enough interest from our first one to make it sustainable, from a business sense."

Lyco raised an eyelid. "And…you want my help?"

"Right! I…" Raskin faltered, feeling his face heat up. _Stop that!_ he told himself angrily—like that would do much good. "Well, I know I don't really know you, Lyco, and I'm sorry for what happened to your house—well, not your _house_ , but—"

"Holy shit, spit it out already."

"You know stuff!" Raskin spluttered. "I mean, we were clueless about setting up a fighting space, but you knew what to do. And you actually… _can_ fight, or at least know more about it. We need someone with that kind of knowledge to make sure fights run correctly." He paused. "Plus, given how much time you spend in Oldden, I hoped that you might know some… other spaces that we could host from."

Lyco nodded slowly.

 _This seems promising,_ Raskin thought. _She hasn't told me to shut up for about a minute._

"What's changed from last week?" she said. "You never said anything about holding another fight then."

Raskin and Sid exchanged a glance. "We lost our jobs," Raskin said. "Or, we will be. We're getting made redundant, and thought that the money from that could go towards… a more permanent location, say. Maybe some extra measures that would make it a better experience for everyone."

"You _both_ lost your jobs?" Lyco said. "At the same time?"

"I think word of what we organised leaked to our bosses."

Lyco's eyes widened. "Gods. That was all it took..." She paused, shaking her head. "You must realise then, that this sort of thing isn't taken lightly by the police. If you're caught, caught _properly_ , then—"

"Yes, we know that," Raskin said. "We knew that the first time around."

"Then why _exactly_ are you willing to put everything you've got on the line again? Don't say it's just money, because I don't believe that."

Raskin hesitated, and Sid spoke up before he could. "Because it made a difference to people," the quilava said. "I was only watching, but coming out of Oldden that night, I felt happier than I had in weeks."

"Chaka too," Raskin said. "The raticate," he added at Lyco's look of confusion. "Before that fight, I felt like he had a genuine animosity for Aster. But afterwards, they looked like old friends. It was like he'd just needed to let off some steam."

"And hell, I bet there's lots of pokémon that felt—or feel—the same!" Sid chimed in, eyes glowing. "Rasky and I have gotten _so_ many requests since that night from 'mon who want to fight. We probably have enough in the pipeline already to supply this fighting space for weeks."

Lyco didn't respond immediately. She looked at the floor, one paw across her mouth in thought. When she took it away, Raskin thought he could see a flicker of a smile.

"I'm glad that I don't have to argue this point with you," she said. "It _is_ a travesty that we aren't free to fight in this city. They teach you in school that our ancestors that fought day and night, whether in the wild or for trainers, were some kind of lesser beings to us now. It's all bullshit. Fighting is what we _are_ as pokémon. Taking it away is like taking away our ability to speak, or mate. It's just pokémon nowadays don't realise that."

Raskin stared at her, his heart lifting with hope. He wasn't sure he could feel quite as strongly as she did, but the intensity of her words was encouraging. "You want to help us, then?"

"Yes. However." Lyco shook her mane back, creating a faint cloud of rock dust that forced some coughs out of Raskin. "It's only fair that, if we're together on this, I should make a few demands of you two."

Raskin's smile wavered. "Like what?"

"Firstly, that you're committed _._ I'm not willing to waste my time with you if you run a couple of fights, then, say, an _enticing job opportunity_ comes up and you decide that oh, this fight thing was fun, but it's time to get a real job again. No passivity. We will have to work our asses off if this is to succeed."

"Will we?" Sid asked. "Aren't we just… y'know, holding fights?"

"And that brings me to my other point," Lyco said. "Your plan is to hold, what, a fight or two every session? And have one session a week?"

"Maybe two," Sid said.

"Whatever. But look, if you truly believe in the value of fighting, I think you'll agree that that's the wrong approach. Holding one or two fights at a time limits everyone else's involvement. Make it so that this fight… club, fight society, whatever you wanna call it, is where _anyone_ can fight. Someone new turns up? They have to fight. Someone had a shit day at work? They have to fight. In fact, I'd say that it's a failure if a _single_ pokémon turns up and goes home without fighting."

Lyco seemed to have transformed before their eyes. She was animated, paws gesturing and slamming together every time she mentioned fighting, her eyes alive with excitement. Raskin was amazed. He had not anticipated such radical-sounding ideas from her—if anything, he'd expected the opposite. Still, he couldn't help feeling a little doubtful.

"That all sounds… great, but won't it get out of control?" he said. "We saw what happened with the last fight—that was just _one_."

"That got out of control because emotions flared," Lyco stated. "Nothing a few ground rules wouldn't put a stop to."

Raskin frowned. "Really?"

Lyco rolled her eyes. "You said yourself that I know about fighting."

Sid gave Raskin a sideways glance. "She's got you there."

"Sid!" Raskin said. He turned back to Lyco. "Fine. Then what about keeping this thing sustainable? If all the pokémon are fighting every time they go to a meetup, won't they get bored after a while?"

"No!" Lyco snapped, so suddenly that Raskin almost fell off his stool. "Fighting is not like reading the same book, or listening to the same song. Your opponents change. Your abilities improve. You learn things about yourself. You don't get _bored_."

The room went silent.

"Can y'all just… stop a second?"

Raskin looked down. Tyler had spoken up for the first time. Judging by the look in his eyes, the nidoran was utterly bewildered.

"How is it that you and you," Tyler said, jabbing a paw at Sid and then Raskin, "are organising some… fighting enterprise, when neither of yous know the first thing about it? I beat both your asses in Oldden!"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, nido," Lyco said, flicking her mane disdainfully. "You're the one still leeching off others' property, and who can hardly string a sentence together."

Raskin half-expected Tyler to leap up at Lyco in attack for that, or at least snap something back at her. But he merely gave her a vengeful look, then dropped his head.

"However," Lyco added, glancing back at Raskin, "the hatchling makes a good point. You'd better be prepared to fight too. _Are_ you prepared?"

"Of course!" Sid said, almost dutifully. "I look forward to it!"

Lyco raised an eyelid at Raskin, who nodded quickly. "Yeah."

Her gaze lingered a moment longer, before going back to Tyler. "What's he still doing here, anyway?"

"I thought we might want his help," Raskin said. "Could attract a few more pokémon from around Oldden."

Lyco's eyes narrowed. "I can take care of Oldden, should we need to… advertise. In fact, Tyler—" She gestured to the door. "You can leave now. I'll find you if I want you involved with anything." Her coldness of tone suggested that was highly unlikely.

"I…" Tyler huffed, sounding frustrated. "Fine then."

He shuffled a couple of steps, then suddenly spun back around. "You still haven't paid me!" he barked, eyes fixed on Raskin.

With a sigh, Raskin hopped down from the stool and finally passed over the fifteen poké. As soon as Tyler had stuffed the coins in his shoulder bag, he practically bolted out of the door.

"Good thing it doesn't lock from this side," Lyco remarked, watching him. She turned to Raskin. "Meet me at the Founding Oak tomorrow evening. We can start laying things out then. Now's not the time or place."

"Oh—okay," Raskin said. "You already have some ideas, then?"

Lyco hummed, making her own way to the door. "A few."

They got a few disapproving glances from cleaners in the mining building as they left, but thankfully nothing more. Raskin tried to keep as straight a face as Lyco, both to prevent scowls on her part, and to avoid any 'mon asking them awkward questions.

Inside, though, his heart was racing. And when he exchanged glances with Sid, he knew he was thinking the same thing. _Lyco's not messing around._ We're _not messing around. Mew, this is actually happening..._


	6. Blazing

Raskin stood outside the White Entei, rubbing his ears anxiously. He looked out across the cobbled street for the linoone they were waiting for. The final piece of their preparation.

The week had passed in a whirlwind. It was only on Monday morning, he reflected, that he had wanted nothing to do with another organised fight. It was only  _ Tuesday _ when he had feared that Lyco would elude him for good, and with that would go any reasonable hopes of setting up a proper fight society. Now, the following Saturday, those struggles felt a long way away. 

On Wednesday, he and Sid had met Lyco again, underneath the Founding Oak as they agreed. First they’d needed to find a venue, and Lyco had to his surprise asked them to pick their brains before suggesting anything herself.

“The criteria shouldn’t be too hard to fulfil,” she said. “We need somewhere with a room that’s hidden to onlookers. The room itself will need to be fairly big. And most importantly, the people owning it have to be ones you trust.”

Raskin and Sid exchanged looks.

“I think there’s a basement at the White Entei,” Sid suggested. “I’ve been going there since I was too young to drink, so I know the owners pretty well. They’re sound.”

With that in mind, they left for the pub straight away. They found the owner, a raboot named Steela, serving at the bar, and suggested their plan when she found a spare moment.

Steela’s response was one that Raskin was growing used to now. Surprise, even laughter initially; greater seriousness when she realised that they weren’t fooling around; and finally, when a deal had been tentatively agreed, a sudden excitement for it all. 

The pub seemed ideal for a number of reasons. The basement Sid remembered was as large as the bar upstairs, once it had been cleared of clutter. Steela still expressed worries that if too much noise was coming from underground—which looked likely if the snubbull Bushu was to return with his drum—it would be noticeable from upstairs, and perhaps even from outside the pub. The solution they came up with was to turn up the radio that normally played in the bar to an almost deafening noise, enough to drown out any loud bangs and crashes.

That then left a potentially awkward problem of the pub being very loud, but empty. To work around that, Steela said she could hang a notice on the pub to say it had been booked for a private party. The building’s exterior was covered with painted murals of its namesake, a white Entei, or at least how legend believed Entei’s body had looked. That meant that no one could get a good look inside the pub from afar; they would only see if they peered right through a gap in the murals. And, given the pub was clearly signposted as being unavailable, there was little chance of that happening.

Raskin caught sight of a long, pale shape across the street, and let out the breath he’d been unknowingly holding. The bulging sack across the linoone’s midriff made it much slower than the species usually was. She almost stumbled up to Raskin before unloading the sack with a sigh of relief.

A piece of paper was stuck to the sack. The linoone picked it up. “Fifty oranberries?”

“That’s right.”

The linoone nodded wearily. “500 poké, then,” she said. As Raskin passed over some coins, she added, “These for a batch of health cocktails or something?”

“Something like that,” Raskin said sheepishly. “The boss is trying some new stuff. Not sure it’s for me.”

The linoone snorted. “I’m with you there.”

As she trotted away, Raskin allowed himself a smile.  _ I’m getting good at this lying business _ . Then he tried to lift the sack, and his smile disappeared at once. 

It took a combined shift from him and Lyco to get it down the basement’s many steps and into one end of the room, next to the rest of their first aid supplies: bandages, disinfectant, water, and lots of cloth.

He was surprised the linoone hadn’t asked about the sheer quantity of berries they had ordered. It seemed excessive to Raskin when Lyco had sketched out the numbers, taking up about one eighth of their entire savings alone. But the lycanroc had been adamant.

“They’re an investment—people won’t need the berries unless they’re really hurt,” she said.

“Then why are we buying so many?” Raskin demanded.

Lyco rolled her eyes. “Bulk-buying is cheaper, obviously. Basic economics.”

While they moved the berries, Sid was busy placing a series of cylindrical logs around the room’s corners. Though the basement did have a single, dim light bulb hanging from its centre, they had agreed that the atmosphere created by the flaming torches last time had to stay. It was another stroke of luck that there was a fan inside one of the walls that Steela could switch on for them, making sure they wouldn’t suffocate from the fumes. Lyco had also drawn a fighting ring in the middle of the room with chalk once again, though this time they had painted over it in white so it wouldn’t rub off.

Next to the first aid equipment was a couple of upturned wooden crates. Raskin had pointed out that in Oldden’s packed room, he had barely managed to keep track of what was happening around him, which they would need to do in the event of crowd trouble. The makeshift podium allowed for that, plus it was a place to deliver announcements and anything else that required the whole room’s attention.

“This all sounds good,” Raskin said as they sat in the White Entei, having worked out how the room should look. “But we still need to get people in.”

“That’s the easy part, isn’t it?” Sid frowned. “You saw how much interest there was last time.”

“And that interest was what lost us our jobs,” Raskin reminded him. “We have to find a way of doing things more secretively, to protect ourselves.”

The three of them thought for a moment. Lyco sipped a glass of tap water—the whiskey had been eschewed this time.

“There’s always the post,” Sid said. “Nobody reads that except the ‘mon receiving it.”

“The post…” Raskin smiled. “Yes, that could work. Sending letters to the ‘mon we know would be interested, and telling  _ them  _ to only spread the word via further letters.”

Lyco hummed a disapproving note. “Can we really trust people to communicate purely via letters, and say nothing face-to-face? That’s not how anyone does things.”

“Well, if we don’t want word to get out, what other option is there?” Raskin asked.

Another contemplative silence.

“Codewords,” Sid said.

Both Raskin and Lyco gave him bemused looks.

“I-I mean, don’t  _ call  _ this thing ‘Fight Den’, because then anyone overhearing might get suspicious! Use a name that wouldn’t mean anything to people.”

Raskin smiled. “The White Entei? That is where they’re going, after all.”

Lyco shook her head. “We don’t want the name of our secret venue getting thrown around everywhere. We need a word similar to ‘fight’, but different enough. We could call it… a ‘hangout’?”

The way it sounded as if she had never said the word before made Raskin snort into his glass. “Sorry,” he said, being met with the lycanroc’s typical glare. “I think that’s good.”

“There could still be room for your letters,” Lyco added. “We can start off by sending them to ‘mon you know would be interested; those you trust the most. Give  _ them  _ instructions on how to further spread the word—codewords to use and such. If they’re the ones getting the word out, it makes our jobs easier. Just make  _ sure  _ you trust them.”

* * *

The downside of their careful messaging, Raskin reflected, as he sat on one of their upturned crates, was that they had no indication of numbers for tonight. And there was no way they could make this work without enough pokémon coming through the door.

He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. One hour until opening.

Sid climbed up onto the crate to sit beside him. “How’re you feeling?” the quilava asked, appearing to rock back and forth slightly with excitement. The anticipation of tonight seemed to be affecting him very differently to Raskin.

Raskin sighed. “Anxious. Nervous.”

Sid laughed. “Typical Rasky, always worrying. You know deep down that this is gonna be a cinch.”

The nickit shrugged. Given over half of his and Sid’s redundancy money—which they had only  _ received  _ yesterday afternoon—had already been spent, Sid’s jovial attitude felt implausible. “Maybe.”

“So… remind me. You’re gonna start us off, right?” Sid asked. 

Raskin nodded. “I’ll get everyone’s attention, then run over the basic rules.” He patted the notebook which he had been memorising non-stop for the past two days. No one wanted to see a  _ notebook _ at Fight Den.

“And then, what, we get the fights underway?”

“Yep. I guess get two volunteers from the crowd to go first, and hopefully it’ll move from there.”

Sid shook his head, smirking. “What?” Raskin demanded.

“You say ‘hopefully’ too much, ‘mon. Have a little faith, eh?” Sid beat his paws together, jumping back off the crates. “Alright, I’m gonna check on upstairs. Less-than-an-hour-to-go-hype!”

* * *

To Raskin’s relief, pokémon soon began arriving in good time. He was delighted to see Bushu again, and arriving with him was Luis. The zangoose had somehow puffed up his fur to give him a build more like a hariyama than the lithe form that was underneath. To Raskin’s moderate surprise, Aster had also returned, along with his deerling partner.

“I wondered if you might have had enough fighting after Oldden,” Raskin said to the ivysaur, as the two of them paid their entry fees. Twenty poké this time. The increase in price felt justified for all the extra effort they were going to.

“Are you kidding?” Aster scoffed. “That was so much fun! I’m looking forward to being part of the crowd this time. From what I’ve heard, it was crazy!”

Though the upstairs was hardly a place for conversation over the roaring music, Steela was offering cut prices on spirits at the bar, which got a lot of takers. At one point, she caught Raskin’s eye and raised her eyelids as if to say, ‘ _ this is more profitable than I expected!’  _ Raskin hoped that might make her reduce her rent rates for the future.

Gradually, the crowd moved towards the basement. Raskin waited until five minutes past nine before instructing Steela to lock the front door. One thing he had found he and Lyco did have in common was a shared hatred for unclear start times. In all their letters of invitation, they made it clear to be there  _ for  _ nine, no later—otherwise pokémon would undoubtedly turn up half an hour late and think it was normal. It made deciding when to lock up easier, too.

He led the last arrivals downstairs, and was struck—just as at Oldden—by the sheer number of pokémon present. The codewords and secrecy warnings they had given had not deterred the fifty-odd heads he counted.

He was also surprised, and confused, at why the side torches had not been lit, and the dim electric light remained on. Had Sid forgotten?

Looking around the room, he found the quilava in conversation with a growlithe and salandit, gesturing avidly with his paws. “Sid,” Raskin began, making his way over.

“The torches?” Sid grinned. “I’ve got it sorted. You should get up on the podium already!”

Raskin frowned at him, but Sid’s look of conviction suggested he knew exactly what he was doing. Or he was just an idiot, but Raskin gave his friend more credit than that.

He made his way over to the crates, noticing with amusement that not a single pokémon stood inside the central fighting ring, despite its lack of action. Lyco was already sitting on a crate.

“Everything ready?” she said.

“I hope—I mean, yes.”

The lycanroc nodded. “Make sure to remind them of the importance of keeping this secret.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

Lyco had been curiously distant from much of their work since they had laid out a plan. Once they had identified the White Entei, she had only dropped in the occasional word in the meeting with Steela, and had largely given him and Sid instructions on what supplies to get, rather than do it herself. Even now, with the thing actually  _ happening _ , she seemed content to take a back seat.

_ But she does care,  _ Raskin thought, thinking back to what she had said at the mine.  _ Perhaps it’ll just take time to come out in the open. _

He stood up, drawing in a breath. He had prepared himself to shout for everyone’s attention, but most ‘mon seemed to realise this the moment he moved, conversations trailing off. He waited for the room to draw to a hush before speaking.

“Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fight Den! Hopefully, you’re all here because you want to fight—”

The room erupted with screams of delight, Bushu’s drum thudding underneath.

Raskin smiled, letting it run for a moment before holding up a paw. Once again, the room quietened. _It’s like I’m a god_ , he thought, amazed. 

“Although I am as excited as any of you,” he said, “I must lay down some ground rules before we begin. The first rule of Fight Den is: you do not talk about Fight Den. It is imperative that we keep this society a secret if it is to continue. Any communication even  _ slightly  _ related to Fight Den must be done either inside these walls; using the codewords you should all know already—please talk to us if you do not; or sent via private post. However, please do not send post to myself or my colleague, Sid Quilava, unless it is an emergency.

“Rule two: as much as we’re all here to have fun, things could very easily get out of control. The only pokémon allowed to fight are the two in the ring.”

This was a rule Lyco had been very strong about. “We can’t have a repeat of what happened in Oldden,” she’d said.

“Well, this is a much bigger room,” Sid replied. “And it’s made of stone or... something…”

“I don’t mean holes in the wall,” Lyco groaned. “A fight practically broke out in the  _ crowd _ . It was chaos. And there might be double the people in this place. The only place they can fight is in the ring.”

That led nicely into the next rule they had devised. “Rule three,” Raskin continued. “The winner of any fight can stay on for the next fight if they wish to. They may  _ also  _ request to fight a specific pokémon in attendance, as long as this pokémon agrees to it. Rule four: a fight ends either when a pokémon is pushed out of the ring, they stay down for more than five seconds, or they surrender. Any pokémon that continues fighting when the fight is clearly over will be banned, no questions asked. “

He paused, and noticed with alarm that the complete attention the crowd had been giving him was fading fast. There were mutters amongst groups, pokémon shifting restlessly. Some were even moving to the sides of the room, away from him.  _ Why? I haven’t finished yet!  _ he thought.  _ I’ll have to get this done quickly. _

“Rule five: if you are seriously hurt, you must not leave the building until we let you. Walking out with bleeding limbs would be far too conspicuous. And finally, rule six—”

The room was suddenly plunged into total darkness. The electric bulb had gone out.

Raskin froze, horrified. The murmuring below him intensified ten-fold, coupled with a few yelps. Then a voice cried out: “FIRE!”

Six bursts of fire appeared at once, spread out across the room. After a second, the flames settled and continued to burn. The torches had been simultaneously lit, and they immediately transformed the room’s atmosphere with the flickering, shadowy lights they threw.

Sid, who had been at the back of the room, strode forward until he stood in the middle of the fighting ring. “Rule six,” he yelled, “is that no one leaves tonight without having a fight!”

The crowd howled and whooped with delight. Some even  _ applauded,  _ like they’d just witnessed some display of talent. Raskin was amazed.

“And,” Sid went on, “that starts with—” he gave Raskin the briefest, delighted glance, “—me and Raskin here!”

Time seemed to stand still. 

Raskin could only stare at Sid in horror, ice seeping into his bones. He had no time to prepare for this. No time to steel himself. Why had Sid not told him he would do this? Why?

Next to him, Lyco gave his shoulder a jerk. “You should get down there,” she said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

And Raskin knew she was right. Sid had set this up perfectly. He couldn’t disappoint all these pokémon now.

He carefully stepped down from the crate and walked towards the ring, trying to put on a calm face. A few pokémon he walked through patted him on the head or back, which strangely did boost his confidence a little.

Sid waited in the centre of the ring for him. “Alright, mate?” he grinned, keeping his voice down this time.

“You could have told me this in advance,” Raskin replied, doing his best to steady his own voice.

“Pssh. I only got the idea ten minutes ago!”

With that, the quilava turned and padded to one corner of the ring. Raskin sighed, but did likewise. He had no choice.

“Lyco,” Sid called, looking to her on the podium. “Could you set us off for the night?”

Lyco simply nodded. It was impossible to tell from her expression if she was pleased with this arrangement. “On your marks,” she began. Bushu started playing a rhythm, slowly getting faster.

Raskin’s mind was racing.  _ What do I do? I don’t have any experience with fighting! Well, I suppose no one does, but everyone else seems to at least have the right mindset! _

“Get set…”

Sid got onto all-fours, his back legs tensed. 

_ He’s going to come straight at me,  _ Raskin thought.  _ That’s what he did with Tyler, right? I should get closer to the centre so I don’t get pushed out immediately. Isn’t that what I want, though? No, the crowd wouldn’t have it if I surrendered easily— _

“FIGHT!”

Sid hurtled towards him like a runaway kit.  _ Get away!  _ some part of Raskin screamed. He dashed forwards, intending to swerve around Sid, then he saw the quilava’s legs leave the ground in front of him. Before he could think, he threw himself to the floor and rolled. He felt himself knock something.

The crowd ‘ooohed’. Raskin scrambled back to his feet. Sid was down. He had tripped him up!

Sid exhaled heavily, then got up and spun to face Raskin again. “Not bad, Rasky,” he said, still grinning. Then, rapidly changing his stance, the quilava dove forwards again. Low this time.

Raskin was too surprised to react in time. Sid led with his shoulder, and it cracked square into his stomach. He fell backwards.

_ “You can’t arrest him! He’s done nothing wrong! He’s—” _

_ He ran at the officers desperately. The lucario held up a glowing palm, and suddenly he was struck with a sledgehammer of force, throwing him up and across the living room. _

_ He could hardly breathe, hardly move his limbs. He had just enough strength to turn and see the officers moving away, his father held between them, and gasp, “No… no… don’t go…” _

_ … _

“Rasky?”

Raskin opened his eyes. He was on the ground. Shivering. The crowd had been cheering when he was knocked down, but now they murmured and looked around at each other, as if they knew something was wrong. 

Raskin could sense Sid leaning over him. Thinking quickly, he got back to his feet, hoping that moving would hide his shakiness.

“You good?” Sid asked.

“Yeah.” Raskin smiled. “I don’t wanna push myself too much though. We need to be healthy enough to watch over things. Shouldn’t leave all that work to Lyco.”

Sid nodded slowly. “Right. I… guess I should drop out too, then—”

“No, you don’t have to!” Raskin said. “You’re perfect, Sid. Keep going. The two of us will be enough.”

The quilava looked concerned, but after a moment he smiled. “Alright then. Thanks.”

The moment Raskin put a foot outside the ring, the quilava roared, “Who’s next? You’re taking on a reigning champion here!” That seemed to rouse the crowd again.

Raskin slipped and sidestepped his way through the crowd, heading straight back to the crates. No one paid him much mind other than more pats on the back, which seemed good—they hadn’t noticed anything amiss with how the fight had ended.

He wasn’t used to being  _ hit  _ like that—not surprising, given he hadn’t fought since he was kit. But why must it remind him so horribly of that day the police came to their door? It was years ago now. Had he been repressing those memories that much?

As he jumped to get on a crate, his front paw trembled and slipped away. Just before he could yelp, Lyco stuck out a long arm to help him up. 

Raskin gave her a sheepish smile. “Thanks.” He just got a grunt in response.

Eager to take his mind off the past, he sat next to Lyco—there wasn’t anywhere else to sit on the crates—to see what was happening in the ring. A few pokémon had been jostling to be the next one to face Sid, but the winner had been, much to Raskin’s puzzlement, an espurr.

The ‘mon seemed tiny in her corner of the arena, just a pale grey ball amidst a sea of bodies surrounding her. Yet she faced Sid with a look of intense focus. Not that the quilava was at all put off.

“Get us rolling, Lyco!” he called, and the lycanroc duly obliged again.

Sid started exactly the same way, sprinting at the espurr. She was tensed at first, her hands held out in front of her for some reason. But when Sid drew near, she lowered them and sidestepped past the quilava with unexpected speed.

“Raskin,” Lyco said.

Raskin jumped. It felt like the first time Lyco had called him by name, rather than ‘you’, or a jab of a paw. 

“Something happened to you down there,” she said. “You didn’t want to fight.”

“Well, I didn’t have much time to prepare for it—”

“Let’s not lie to each other here.” She turned to him, her crimson eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head. I don’t expect you to tell me, either. But you realise that, as one of the leaders of Fight Den, it would be helpful for you to be seen  _ fighting  _ now and again?”

Raskin scowled. “We’re putting our balls on the line just by running this. Everyone should know that. I don’t see why I need to get involved with the fighting side too.”

Lyco’s gaze lingered a moment longer, then she flicked her mane away. “Whatever. Your choice.”

Raskin glanced at the ring. Sid was still on the offensive, though he wasn’t rushing into attacks with the same frantic energy as before.

“You’re not exactly one to talk, anyway,” Raskin said. “Why aren’t you getting involved?”

Lyco sighed, drawing up her legs to herself. “Remember when we met in Oldden, you wondered why I was limping after throwing those rocks at Tyler?”

Raskin nodded. “You said it took a lot out of you, or something.”

“I wasn’t lying. An attack like that should be a rock-type’s bread and butter. And it used to be for me, too.” She paused. “I have an… unusual disorder. Energy Fatigue Syndrome is what the doctors called it. What would be a breeze for most pokémon, ends up tiring me out like  _ that _ .” She snapped her claws for emphasis.

“I… I didn’t know that,” Raskin stuttered. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Sorry.”

Lyco shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.”

A sudden roar from the crowd gave Raskin a chance to break the uncomfortable exchange. Looking to the arena, he was met with the confusing sight of Sid on the ground, groaning in pain, while the espurr stood in the centre of the ring, almost statuesque, and with barely a scratch on her.

“What happened?” Raskin asked.

“Wasn’t watching too closely,” Lyco said. “You were distracting me.”

With a sigh, Raskin jumped down into the crowd and asked the same question to Luis, who was nearby.

“Espurr hasn’t been doing anything other than staying out of Sid’s way,” the zangoose said, his eyes fixed on the arena, where Sid was getting to his feet again. “But just now, she raised an arm in front of her, and Sid got thrown backwards without anything touching him!”

Sid’s flame sacs were spitting fire. He tensed his legs as if to run at the espurr again, but instead lurched forward and spat… Raskin assumed he meant it to be fire, but all that appeared was a dark smoke, as had happened against Tyler.

It did distract the espurr, however, as she waved her arms to try and get a clear view of the quilava. Sid took the opportunity to go for another tackle, but the espurr saw him just in time, rolling to the side.

Immediately, she raised her arm again towards Sid’s unbalanced form. The air between the two shimmered, as if obscured by glass, then there was a bang, Sid cried out, stumbled back, and finally collapsed to his haunches.

_ Amazing,  _ Raskin thought.  _ I had no idea that kind of attack even existed. _

Sid remained down, coughing faintly, and the crowd began chanting, knowing he had five seconds to recover.

_ “One, two, three, four—” _

Sid’s flame sacs suddenly ignited like a match dropped into a bucket of oil. Parts of the crowd on his edge of the ring cried out in alarm and backed away. Sid leapt to his feet again, as Raskin waited for the fire to settle.

But it didn’t. His head and rear were fully on fire.

Sid opened his mouth again, his face glowing against the fire’s light, and this time a fireball came at the espurr, as high as her body. She scrambled away from it—as did the crowd behind her—and dove away just in time, leaving the fire sizzling to embers against the basement wall. But Sid wasn’t off-balance like she now was. He launched himself at her, leading with his flaming head.

His tackle flung the psychic-‘mon far out of the arena, crashing into a group of watchers. Thankfully her eyes remained open as she landed—she looked more dazed than anything else.

The rest of the crowd roared their appreciation for Sid, though Raskin could also pick up some murmurings from close-by.

_ “How’s his body on fire like that?” _

_ “I’ve never seen anything like it!” _

_ “I thought what that espurr was doing was crazy enough…” _

“Quilava is the winner!” Lyco called out from the podium. “And if he is staying on—”

“You bet I’m staying on!” Sid cried. He looked around the crowd, grinning delightedly. He was like a beacon with his flaming body. “Who’s up next?” There was a noticeable hesitation in the crowd this time before a marshtomp stepped forward.

Once Lyco had set them off, Sid wasted no time in launching another fireball at the marshtomp. He didn’t try to get out of the way as the espurr had, simply shielding himself with his thick arms. As water-types could do, the ‘mon absorbed its heat without visible difficulty. When Sid then began his trademark charge forwards, the marshtomp met him with a tackle of his own.

Both ‘mon were sent sprawling, though Sid seemed to catch the brunt of the impact. He got up and tried another tackle, but moved slower than before, and the marshtomp easily blocked him again. This time, Sid’s flames extinguished the moment he hit the ground. 

He propped his head up on his elbows, took one look at the marshtomp already standing, ready for more, and held an arm up in surrender. The second wind he had found to defeat the espurr had been only that. But he limped out of the ring to enormous applause, with virtually every person Raskin’s side of the room leaning in to high-five or fist-bump or slap him on the back.

Raskin waited at the back of the crowd for the quilava to come through. When he finally emerged, Raskin got a jolt at seeing him no longer smiling. His eyes were wide and unfocused, as if he’d just been electrocuted.

“Sid?” Raskin said. “Are you okay?”

Sid nodded, stepping gingerly away from the crowd towards Lyco and the crates. A helioptile had taken his place in the ring, which was now side-stepping around the marshtomp carefully. 

“I’m just… trying to process what happened,” Sid said at last.

“The whole setting yourself on fire thing?” Raskin said, smiling. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You didn’t— _ I  _ didn’t know!” Sid exclaimed. “I’ve never experienced anything like that before! The espurr’s mind attacks, the flame sacs, the… the fireballs  _ I _ made! I…I…”

To Raskin’s surprise, Sid suddenly threw his arms around him. His fur was almost burning hot. “This Fight Den,” Sid said, “what we’ve created… it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. And it’s all thanks to you, Rasky.”

“Don’t be silly,” Raskin chuckled, patting him gingerly on the back. “I’m glad you pushed me to go ahead with it. Your fur is very hot.”

“Oh! Sorry.” Sid moved away, feeling the fur himself. “Huh. That’s new too… Well anyway, I’m gonna head back into the crowd. Don’t wanna miss anything, y’know?”

Raskin nodded, but as Sid began walking away, he remembered something else. “Sid!” he called.

The quilava turned back, confused.

“Uh… why  _ did  _ you make that first fight happen between us? Was it just a crazy impulse?”

Sid smirked. “It  _ was  _ a crazy impulse, but that wasn’t why. I thought that some of the ‘mon coming in here, ones that don’t know us well, might think all we care about is their money. Especially given we—well, you and Lyco—were on that podium while they’re all bunched together down here. So, what better way to show what we’re about than by kicking the whole thing off ourselves?”

Raskin smiled. It confirmed what he had already hoped. He had forever been frustrated with Sid for his rashness, forgetfulness, even downright stupidity at times. But when it came to these fights, the quilava seemed to possess such an innate understanding of how to be entertaining, play to the crowd, get everyone onside. He had found his calling.

Sensing something behind him, Raskin turned to find Lyco looking down at him from the podium, her eyes narrowed. He knew what she was thinking, and sadly, he agreed.

_ If only I could feel the same. _


	7. Fervor

Three short hours after they had started, Steela stuck her head into the basement and told everyone, decisively, that it was closing time. The meowth and treecko in the ring stopped fighting. For the first time that night, Raskin felt he could draw breath.

The fights had not stopped for even a minute. Every time one pokémon stepped away, there were five more eager to take their place, even towards closing time when some pokémon had left. It had meant that, despite the intentions of their rules, several scuffles had broken out among two pokémon impatient for a turn in the ring.

The first few times, a harsh warning from Lyco or Sid—whoever saw it happening first—was enough to break things up. Eventually, when one scuffle began close to the crates they sat on, Lyco leapt down into the crowd herself and physically lifted a tyrogue away from the meditite he had disagreed with.

“The next person,” she yelled, into the poor tyrogue’s withered face, “to break rule two will be escorted out of here _myself._ Do I make myself clear?”

The tyrogue nodded frantically, and the rest of the room slowly gave a rumble of approval.

“Good.” She dropped the tyrogue back down, the ‘mon landing in a heap, and skulked back to the crates.

When she was about to climb up, she turned back to the crowd. Most of them were still watching her.

“And by the way,” she said. “I _want_ to see all of you fight. I know what an experience it is. That’s why I’m risking everything I have to put Fight Den on with these two.” She nodded to Raskin, on the crates with her, and Sid, who had stepped out of the crowd. “For that, I think the least we deserve is your respect.”

She got back onto the box. Still the room was silent. Lyco rolled her eyes at them. “Drummer boy,” she barked, which made Bushu jump.

“Y-yes?” he said.

“You going to carry on drumming for us?”

“Oh—right!”

The snubbull launched into a rapid, complicated rhythm, which soon got the crowd engaged again. Lyco sat back, satisfied.

The crowd was immaculately behaved after that.

* * *

The metal shower head spewed out steaming water. Sid, standing in the basin, stared at it. He tensed himself—wait, no, not tense, _relax_ , that’s what he needed to do. He imagined the shower head as some rabid enemy… spitting water, maybe…

He paused. A shower head didn’t really look like any pokémon, did it?

So he thought back to the marshtomp that had defeated him last time. He hadn’t had a chance at a rematch yet. He imagined the ‘mon running towards him for a tackle. Now was the time to strike!

The quilava felt for that warmth in his chest that had always been there, just buried, like rocks under a quarry. The rubble was slowly clearing the more he practiced. He drew the feeling up through his lungs and throat, opened his mouth, exhaled—

For a moment just a couple of smoke clouds appeared, then there was a rush of fire. It went straight into the water stream, which reacted with a furious sizzling.

Mew, he loved this feeling. It felt so natural, like his body had been crying out for it for so long, and was just now getting the rewards.

But _Mew_ , it was difficult to keep up. He counted: one second, two seconds, three—

Someone pounded on the bathroom door, making Sid yelp in surprise. The fire ceased.

_Damn! That was my best yet…_

“Sid!” Raskin barked from the other side of the door. “How long are you gonna be, dude?”

Sid sighed. Well, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. He didn’t want to exhaust himself before tonight. “Not long,” he said. “I’ll…”

He broke off, coughing. Then he noticed black smoke. Where had _that_ come from? It was seeping everywhere, including towards the door. _Oh no._ He scrambled out of the bath, batting his paws at it.

“Sid, what—what’s happening in there?” Raskin exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine!” Sid said, but at that moment the door burst open, its locking mechanism flying across the room.

Raskin looked at the little room, now swamped with smoke, the shower still running, and in the middle of it all Sid, his fur drooping with how drenched it was.

“Sid,” he said, his mouth slightly open. “ _What were you doing_?”

Sid shifted uncomfortably on the bathmat. “Practising my fire,” he said. “The shower seemed the safest place.”

“Did you not anticipate _this_?” Raskin gestured to the carbon whatever-gas-it-was around them.

“I didn’t think I’d produce so much fire. That was a new record!”

“Well I’m… pleased for you,” Raskin said, forcing a smile. He coughed heavily. Sid winced.

“We should have some time at the Entei before people arrive for you to do some more practice. Until then…”

“I got it,” Sid said nodding. “I’m just really excited, y’know? I feel like we’re only just scratching the surface with all this, what with no one having properly _fought_ for so long. It’s like, how far can I go? I dunno.”

Raskin nodded, though he seemed oddly uncomfortable about something. “Gonna need to get a new lock fitted now,” he muttered, almost to himself. He looked up. “Open the window in here. I’ll do the same with the rest of them. Hopefully that means the smoke alarm won’t go off.”

Sid’s ears dropped at the thought. That piercing alarm really messed with Raskin’s sensitive ears. He’d have to be more careful in future.

Fortunately, the alarm did not sound. When Sid emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, Raskin was poring over the day’s newspaper on the sofa. Sid wandered over to see what had him so engrossed.

‘ _System Update: How Computers are Revolutionising our Industries’_ , read one headline, accompanied by a black-and-white picture of an abra, presumably an engineer, giving a thumbs up. _‘President announces new pharmaceutical investment’_ , said another, next to a snap of the Flygon standing on _some podium_ giving _some speech_ , as she seemed to do.

In fact, Sid wasn’t sure _what_ the president was responsible for other than being ‘the face’ of apparently important matters.

Sid frowned. “Why are you reading this boring stuff, Rasky?”

“The news may be boring, but it’s important,” Raskin said, barely glancing up at his friend. He turned the page. “I’m keeping an eye out for anything that might endanger Fight Den. Any rumours, changes to police operations… things like that. They might be reported in here.”

“But we already have all those safety measures in place.”

Raskin huffed a long sigh. “I know. I’m just being cautious. You know me.” 

_Cautious and on edge_ , Sid thought, concerned. _Still, at least Rasky seems focused. Not hopeless like he was the night we lost our jobs. That’s good._

“Hey, I’m gonna see if I can give the basement a bit more decoration,” he said, grabbing his valuables.

“Will Steela let you in there?” Raskin asked.

“I think so. Hope so, anyway. You wanna come?” Sid asked, pausing at the door.

Raskin thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I still need to shower, after all.” A cold gust suddenly blew in, making the nickit shiver. “And close those bloody windows.”

Sid smiled sheepishly. “Gotcha.”

* * *

Sid made sure to arrive at the White Entei just as it was opening, so Steela wouldn’t be busy. He found the raboot sitting behind the bar, head in a book. Her eyes narrowed when they found him.

“Sid,” she greeted. “I thought your group weren’t getting here until the evening?”

“That’s correct,” he said. “I’m here early. Well, very early. I was wondering if I could… spruce up your basement a little. Assuming we’re gonna be having a few more events here.”

“Mhm,” Steela said, scratching the fur under her chin. “You’ve already got those wooden poles and the crates down there. What else do you need?”

“I was thinking about the walls.”

Steela raised her eyelids. “You want to paint them?”

“Not _paint_ paint them… I was thinking a bit like the murals you have on the exterior here. Only, things related to fighting. Like…” Sid tried gesturing, then gave up. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

“I… see,” Steela said slowly. “And who’s the artist doing this?”

“Oh! Well…” Sid felt his face heat up, and cursed silently. Not in front of Steela. “I think _I_ could do a decent job of it. I used to draw loads at school.”

Steela smirked at that, which he didn’t understand. “Here’s the thing,” Steela said. “I’m not really concerned about what you do to that basement. I never had much of a use for it until you boys and that lycanroc showed up. So I don’t care what it ends up looking like. If it works for your enterprise, go for it.”

Sid beamed. “That’s great! I’m—”

“However,” Steela interrupted. “I _am_ concerned about keeping all of us safe. Because we’re all in the shit if the police finds out about this, right?”

Sid nodded vigorously. “Of course.”

“So I will be keeping half-an-eye on things down there. Not that I don’t trust you, Sid, but… well, I don’t really trust anyone.” She smiled at him.

Sid smiled back. _Man, she is so cool,_ he thought wistfully. _I wonder if there’s any way I can get her—oh, I know!_

“Say, you could always join us one night,” he said. “I feel bad for you, staying up here, serving drinks, while we’re having all the fun. I’m sure we could find someone to do your work; or if there’s someone already here that you trust enough...”

“I appreciate the thought,” Steela said, picking up a glass to polish. “But I think my place is at this bar. It’s what my parents brought me up with, and what I’ve done ever since they couldn’t work it anymore. I couldn’t imagine anything different.”

Sid frowned. _But you don’t have to leave all of that…_

Before he could reply, the bell on the door chimed and two customers walked in, a timburr and machop.

“Afternoon lads,” Steela said brightly, leaning against the bar. “Day off work, is it?”

“Aye.” The timburr smiled. “Got the latest construction finished yesterday. Have a few days off now.”

“Ready for a night at the athletics, I take it?”

The timburr laughed. “You know me too well, Stee. Any chance we’ll see you down there?”

“Don’t be daft,” Steela said, already pouring them drinks despite no audible order being made. “You won’t catch me dead neglecting this place on a weekday.” She leant unnecessarily over the bar to pass them the glasses. “Even for two boys as lovely as you.”

The timburr’s face reddened, and his friend laughed. “Now I know why you don’t bring your partner here more often,” he said.

Sid watched on as the timburr gave him an elbow in response, and the three exchanged more jibes. _This really is her life,_ he thought. _Manning the bar. Flirting with customers. She loves it._ _Maybe fighting just isn’t for everyone._

For some reason, that brought his mind to Raskin. Sid frowned, remembering his friend’s strange behaviour last time they were in the basement. _Is fighting for you, Rasky?_

* * *

Today was a Wednesday. The four days since the inaugural Fight Den had passed quickly—Raskin had enjoyed the downtime, at least.

He hadn’t known that tonight’s meet was even happening until Lyco announced it on Saturday night, minutes before the room cleared out in time with the city’s midnight curfew.

“Next meeting is on Wednesday, same start time,” she called. “Remember, don’t talk about Fight Den, use the codewords, only invite people you can trust, don’t be stupid… yada yada. See you then.”

As the crowd began streaming out, Raskin confronted her. “Wednesday? I thought we agreed we were only doing this every Saturday?”

“That is what was _agreed_ ,” Lyco shrugged. “But I had a little chat with Steela while you and Sid were occupied. She said she had made more than she usually would on a Saturday, with our rent and all those drinks she sold at the start. She was up for moving the next Den forwards, with all the same safety measures obviously. It seemed like a no-brainer.”

Raskin knew he should feel pleased. This meant more money, potentially faster growth… yet he couldn’t shake off a little irritation.

“You should have consulted with us first,” he said.

Lyco rolled her eyes. “Really? Surely it’s obvious to you both that more Dens is a good thing?”

“Seems obvious to me,” Sid added helpfully. His voice was muffled from the floor; the quilava seemed to have collapsed the moment the night had ended.

Raskin sighed, then yawned widely. It wasn’t worth getting heated over such a moot point. “Alright,” he said at last. “Let’s just clear up. Sid, you can count the money. Don’t want you to pass out from exhaustion.”

Cleaning up was another condition of Steela’s deal. “ _I’m not having you fight in a cesspit. The walls here are too thin; I don’t want customers to think I’ve got rot growing in the basement.”_

It was more work than the nickit expected. Picking up empty drinks cups was easy enough, but the room—and the arena in particular—was littered with fur. Expending so much energy in the cramped space must have caused a lot of shedding.

But when Sid announced their earnings—‘one thousand, two hundred and a bit’—every ounce of their efforts felt worth it. Split evenly it made four hundred poké each, significantly more than what Raskin had made per week at the bank. And now they were potentially going to make that _again_!

* * *

When Raskin arrived at the pub that evening, it was already in ‘Den Mode’; music pumping and the fake notice on the door. The only ‘mon already there, other than Steela, were Sid, Lyco and Luis, sitting around a table to form one of the more unusual triple-acts Raskin could remember. He joined the quilava and zangoose with their beers. Lyco had an almost-empty whiskey glass.

“Rasky!” Luis greeted as he came over. He patted Sid on the back. “Your boy here’s been working crazy hard downstairs. It looks insane!”

Raskin raised an eyebrow at Sid. “You’ve been here all day?”

Sid shrugged. “Sure. What else would I be doing?”

 _On a holiday? Drinking, probably_ , Raskin thought, then smiled. It was good to see Sid being productive. “If I’d known you were so busy, I’d have come sooner,” he said.

Sid shook his head through a mouthful of liquid. “I didn’t know it would take so long either. Besides, Luis helped me finish.” He drained his glass and grinned. “Wanna take a look? You too, Lyco.”

When Raskin got up to follow him, Steela piped up, “I did some overseeing myself, given that the basement is still part of _my building_. But he did well.” She flashed Raskin a grin of her own.

The basement was, unsurprisingly, pitch-black as they entered. “Oh, I can light the torches now, too!” Sid said. He went around the six of them quickly and efficiently—whatever ‘training’ he had been up to was clearly doing good—while Raskin and Lyco climbed onto the upturned crates to get a view of it all.

He wondered how many times Sid would keep surprising him.

The images on the walls were as simple as they were striking. Anonymous claws raised in attack; an open mouth with canines bared angrily; fire and water symbols drawn with sharp, jagged edges. And on the back wall, opposite Raskin, simply the words ‘FIGHT DEN’.

Sid had always been something of an artist, even though most of his ‘work’ Raskin remembered had been created in school classrooms. Maybe the power of these paintings was from the effect of the lighting, how the torches glimmered in the silver paint Sid had chosen. Or perhaps it was that he just didn’t _see_ this kind of art around the city. Buildings were neat, and clean and… dull.

“I had to stand on one of the crates to reach some of the high points,” Sid said cheerily. “What do you think? It’s not wonky anywhere, is it?”

Raskin shook his head. “I’m… amazed. This is really, really good.”

“Great!” Sid said. “I left plenty of space as well in case anyone wanted to add to it. Would give it a community feel, y’know?”

Raskin nodded. “At this point, I’m willing to trust whatever ideas you have for this place.”

Sid beamed. “Lyco?” he asked, glancing at her.

She grunted. “Pretty good. Imaginative. I’m with Raskin.”

* * *

The hour before Fight Den’s start time was as busy as before, the three of them greeting pokémon who arrived and simultaneously checking that they were from a trusted source. Steela remained in fine spirits, selling a hatload of drinks for her efforts. 

Raskin finally headed down to the basement once the doors had been locked. It was only when the nickit stood on the crates with his two partners, looking over the whole room of pokémon, that he realised how many there were. It seemed at least as many as Saturday. He had expected significantly fewer, with it being a weeknight and mere days after the last event.

“How many of you were here on Saturday?” he asked, after welcoming everyone.

About half of the room raised a limb.

 _Mew, only half?_ Raskin thought. _Word must have travelled quickly._ He glanced briefly at Lyco and Sid. They both seemed more pleased than surprised.

Raskin repeated the rules he had given last time, only without any unexpected interruptions. Then, as this time he still had control over the group, he asked what he had wanted to on Saturday. “Does anyone have any questions?”

A vine from the middle of the crowd shot up. “Yes, Aster?” Raskin said.

“Who’s responsible for doing up the walls?” the ivysaur said. “And can they paint my house while they’re at it?”

Raskin smiled. He gestured to Sid. “Freshly painted today.”

“And if anyone wants to add their own, feel free to come before opening!” Sid called out. “I want this wall to be full of stories, hard-fought battles, new abilities you learned!”

This inevitably received an uproar of delight. _As if the crowd don’t already love him enough_ , Raskin thought.

“Anything else?” Raskin said, when things had eventually calmed.

The espurr who had fought Sid on Saturday raised a paw. “Is there a limit on the number of oranberries each person is allowed?”

 _Ah, the berries._ In the chaos of Saturday’s opening, no one was made aware that there were even berries available to them. It wasn’t until Sid casually took one, after his second stint in the ring of the night, that there had been a sudden flurry of demand. It made sense; the berries were like a painkiller and shot of caffeine in one. They were expensive to buy for a reason.

Raskin glanced at the others again. Sid shrugged. “I don’t see why not?” he whispered. But Lyco stepped between them.

“Not only is there a limit of one,” she said, “but from now on, I’ll be in charge of distributing berries. We don’t have the money or, let’s be clear, legal position to burn through a hundred of them a night. If you have a significant injury, yes, that’s understandable. Otherwise, no. But believe me, if you have any decent level of fitness—which I’d certainly hope so—you’ll recover from hits faster than you might think. Especially as you get more practice.”

Raskin gave her a pointed look. _How do you know all this?_ he thought, not for the first time. Lyco didn’t meet it.

“That’s why we want to get as many pokémon fighting as possible!” Sid said, just as the crowd looked disappointed. “So, who won the last fight on Saturday? Ah, meowth, that’s right! And who will dare challenge her first?”

There was some movement within the crowd before a feisty-looking plusle stepped out into the ring. Then Sid called for Bushu to hit the drums, and the evening’s fighting began.

Raskin mostly watched from afar with Lyco, taking on announcing duties whenever the lycanroc was busy. The quality of fighting was not noticeably better than Saturday, he noted, though the significant number of new faces did not make that surprising. The majority of pokémon just threw themselves at their opponent, whether it be with fists, claws or whole bodies. Several employed biting, as Chaka had done in Oldden. However, whereas the raticate’s fangs had grown and sharpened somehow in using his attack, the other pokémon’s efforts here were much more rudimentary, and left nowhere near as much of an impact as Chaka had left on Aster.

Aster could still launch seeds from his bud as he had done against Chaka; but after using the attack twice, he seemed worn out from it and mostly carried on with just his vines. A couple of fire-types produced elemental attacks, but they weren’t as effective as Sid’s had been. One psyduck’s use of water was successful only in making the poochyena it faced slip on the wet ground.

Sid got just as stuck in as before. A high point came when he found himself facing off against the marshtomp that had been too strong for him in their last fight. This time, there was no stopping him. Even when the marshtomp landed a jet of icy water in his face—which Raskin himself winced at, knowing how painful that would be for Sid—the quilava battled on. His fire attacks didn’t have much impact, but through gritted teeth and a few war cries, he finally wrestled the marshtomp out of the ring, before collapsing himself. Luis and a couple others carried him aloft from the arena.

About two hours in, Lyco suddenly jolted next to Raskin. He looked at her, confused. “What is it?”

She didn’t reply, so Raskin followed her gaze into the ring. A fight had just ended, and the nidoran stepping in to challenge a victorious riolu wore a familiar, cocky smirk.

“…Tyler?” Raskin said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Lyco said. “I take it you didn’t invite him.”

“I haven’t even seen him since we went to the mine. How did he get in without us noticing?”

Lyco growled softly. “Let’s just see what he does. No sense in barging in straight away.” 

Tyler, as it turned out, was quite nifty.

It made sense from what Raskin knew: there being a proper fighting culture where Tyler lived in Oldden, as well as the ease with which the nidoran had outfought himself and Sid when they had first met.

The riolu he fought here had more meat on her bones and stood a good foot taller than Tyler. But he just used that to his advantage. He ducked under the riolu’s punches almost gracefully, then kicked or bit her lower half while she was unbalanced. The riolu quickly realised that tactic wasn’t working, so she ran at Tyler instead. He just smiled as she approached. At the last second, he turned so that she faced the spines on his back. Like the rest of his body, the spines were smaller than the average nidoran’s, but their stunted shape seemed to have merely made them sharper.

The riolu howled with pain as she hit them, collapsing to the ground. Tyler circled her, scratched her several times while she was down, then forced her out of the ring with a decisive tackle.

It perhaps helped that a number of the previous fights had been sloppy, mistake-ridden affairs; nevertheless, the nidoran’s success was met with a wild scream of applause. Tyler stood there for a moment, chin raised high in satisfaction. Then his gaze settled on the upturned crates.

“So, I been watching things here for a lil’ while,” he said, projecting his voice, “and I’m wondering what the hell you two’re doing all the way up there. Raskin, wasn’t you the one pushing for this from the start? Why don’t you get down ‘ere?”

Raskin immediately felt shivers down his tail. “We’re here to keep an eye on things,” he said. “Someone has to do it.”

“Pssh. You don’t need two of ya for that! Hey, I’m allowed to challenge someone now, right?” Tyler looked around the room, which gave some assenting nods.

“A’right then.” Tyler’s eyes glimmered with menace. “Come on down, nickit! I think it’s about time we all saw what you can do!”

Raskin’s heart sank.

He didn’t need to look at Lyco this time to know that refusing was not an option. Some pokémon had already murmured their agreement with Tyler’s words. They _did_ want to see what he was about. After all, he was the organiser, the one who told them how they were _allowed_ to fight.

Aware that fifty pairs of eyes were on him, he quickly dropped down to the floor. His limbs almost buckled; the muscles seemed to have stopped responding. He felt his mouth tremble.

 _Be strong, be strong!_ he told himself, alarmed at the panic already racing through him. He had found a way out of this with Sid the first time; he could do it again. He swallowed, composed himself, then made his way towards the ring, lifting his head up to meet Tyler’s.

“I’m ready,” he said, before the nidoran could get the first word in.

Tyler smiled, smug as ever. “Alrighty. Count us in, Lyco?”

Raskin knew he had to concentrate, form a plan, even if that was just to have a respectable defeat. But he couldn’t stop thinking back to the last time when Sid had tackled him; seeing the police officer snarl, the light beam from its palm, the pain that reduced him to screams…

He heard Lyco counting. The drum pounding. Tyler twitching his hind legs in anticipation. 

He found himself panting, barely able to breathe. His eyes stung, chest ached, ears rang. Then he saw Tyler sprint towards him.

“S-STOP!”

At the sound of his cry, the world seemed to freeze. Tyler stopped, straightened up, looking at him in bewilderment. Sid poked his head out of the crowd. “Rasky?” he murmured.

Raskin couldn’t move. Couldn’t hold back the sobs that started coming.

He really couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even _face_ being in a fight, let alone do it himself. Where could he go now? What would these pokémon think, seeing one of their leaders disintegrate at the mere threat of fighting?

Suddenly, he found himself plucked into the air and squealed involuntarily. Twisting his head, he saw Lyco’s head towering over him. She marched him out of the ring, through the stunned crowd and towards the basement stairs.

“W-what are you doing?” Raskin whispered. “Don’t throw me out of here, please!”

“Shut up,” Lyco muttered. “Sid, take care of things for the last hour,” she called, making sure the quilava gave her a nod of approval, which he hesitantly did.

She waited until they were clear of the crowd, heading up the stairs, before adding, “I’m not throwing you out of your own club, Raskin. I’m saving your ass while it’s still possible.”


	8. Midnight Spar

Raskin blinked at her. “What does that mean? And c-can you at least let go of me?”

“Oh, sure,” Lyco said, as they emerged up into the bar. “I just wasn’t sure if your legs had regained the ability to move.”

She dropped him onto the hardwood floor. Raskin winced.

“Lyco? Raskin?” Steela had noticed them at once, coming out from behind the counter. “What’s happening?”

Lyco waved a dismissive paw. “It’s fine. We just need to talk for a little while.”

Steela frowned. “Will you be coming back?”

“Probably not tonight.”

The raboot folded her arms crossly. “You need to clean up. That was what we agreed.”

“Oh, I’m sure that the zangoose or someone else will help Sid out,” Lyco shrugged. She gave Raskin a shove. “Come on.”

“Sorry, Steela,” Raskin said, giving her a sheepish look. Lyco strode out of the bar before there was time for anyone to argue.

He almost had to run to keep up with the lycanroc’s brisk steps. There were few pokémon around at this hour, and the ones who were didn’t pay them or the White Entei any attention. It was scant comfort.

“Where are we going?” Raskin asked.

Lyco stopped, scanning the surroundings. They were in a patch of greenery, shielded from the glares of streetlights and buildings. Lyco’s scarlet eyes glowed slightly in the darkness. “This should do,” she said. “Sit down.”

Raskin sat against what felt like a shrub, Lyco moving opposite him. He shivered as a flurry of wind passed. Their apartment was only down the road, but his housekeys were still in the Entei, and he didn’t think asking Lyco to fetch them was advisable. Not least because she seemed immune to the cold he felt.

“Raskin,” she said. “You are an idiot.”

Raskin didn’t know what to say.

“You knew before today that you couldn’t fight,” Lyco continued. “What were you hoping to achieve? Did you think you could just shy away from fighting forever? Just sit back and relax as the money rolled in?”

“I don’t know, alright?” Raskin snapped. The lycanroc’s words were a punch in the gut—even more so because he couldn’t argue with them.

Lyco raised her eyelids. “You _don’t know_.”

“It was only on Saturday that this happened for the first time,” Raskin protested. “When Sid tackled me. It…”

He stopped, suddenly feeling exposed.

“It what?” Lyco said.

“Why should I tell you?” Raskin said bitterly. “You still won’t tell us a thing about your life.”

Lyco scowled. But as her mouth opened, she seemed to hold back her words. Her expression softened.

“I want to help you, Raskin,” she said. “In a way, it’s a blessing this happened tonight rather than weeks or months down the line. It means there’s a way back into this for you, if you’re willing to take it.” She paused. “I assume you still want to be a part of Fight Den.”

“Yes,” Raskin said, without hesitation. “This feels like the only… really worthwhile thing I’ve done in my life.”

Lyco showed a flicker of a smile. “Good. I want you to be part of it too.”

“Why?” Raskin blurted. He paused for a moment—the answer had come out of him without thought. Then, “Why am I important to you? You’ve never shown anything but contempt for me or Sid.”

Lyco sighed, glancing at the floor, then back at him. “I’ve met very few pokémon that think like you, Raskin. Just what you said then—that you’re doing this because it feels worthwhile. You might think that’s a common thing to desire. But it’s not. Most pokémon are comfortable living out their lives doing regular jobs, getting food and shelter, being able to socialise out of work. That’s why, until now, nothing like Fight Den has been put together in all the time that fighting has been outlawed. You want something more than this society allows. So do I.”

Raskin blinked. He hadn’t known what response to expect, but it certainly wasn’t that.

“And as for Sid,” Lyco continued, “it’s pretty obvious. He’s a natural at this. And he thinks like you too, to a lesser extent.” She flicked her mane back. “Is that a good enough answer?”

Raskin was reminded of what Lyco had told them in the mine about why pokémon should fight. Her eyes had lit up with the same spark now as they did then. Most of the time that spark it was buried under grumpiness and snappy orders… but it was always there.

“I guess so,” Raskin said.

Lyco gave what seemed to be a genuine sigh of relief. “Then please, tell me what’s happening to you,” she said. “Why you can’t fight.”

So Raskin did. He told her about the police officers appearing at their door, who demanded that his father come with them. How Raskin had refused to believe his only family could be about to disappear. And after his shouting at the officers failed, trying to grab hold of the lucario’s arm.

“It happened so fast,” he said. “Just a flash of light from his paw, then the next thing I knew I hit the side of the wall, every muscle in agony. I’d never been in a real fight before. Never really been _hit_ before. Even as a kit, I shied away from that stuff.”

“So, when Sid tackled you…?”

Raskin nodded. “I thought I’d buried those memories. It just all came back. The sounds of my dad and the officers, being inside our old living room. The shaking in my limbs. It’s like I’m right there. And I still can’t stop it from happening.” He clutched his head in his paws, then shook it violently, as if the memories were just fleas to be discarded. “Now it feels like this… _experience_ will happen any time I even go near a fight. I _hate_ it! I want nothing to do with it! But… I can’t do anything…”

“Well, you can,” Lyco said.

“…What?”

Lyco rubbed her face wearily. “Sorry. I don’t want to diminish what happened to you. But these memories that are hurting you… you can push through them. It will be difficult, but you can do it. I’ll help you.”

Raskin glanced at her, surprised. “How?”

“Only one way I can see,” Lyco said. “You keep facing this until it can’t damage you anymore. After all, this is only a _memory_. It’s—”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Raskin snapped. “You’re not in my head.”

Lyco’s eyes set alight for a moment, then cooled again.

“Look, I’m not always the best at speaking with…” she gestured a paw vaguely, “... _nuance._ Nevertheless: can _you_ see any other solution? Because nothing strikes me.”

“…No,” Raskin muttered. He wanted to bury his head in his ears.

“Then that’s settled. Meet me in Oldden tomorrow at about six o’clock. That’ll be the safest place for us to practice.”

“Practice?” Raskin frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, we’ll have to fight,” Lyco said. “Fighting is what triggers this memory. Or being hit, to be specific.”

“Right, but… I thought you couldn’t fight?”

“Not for long periods. I’ve got enough in me for this. So, six o’clock, yes?”

“I… okay,” Raskin stuttered. “Is there no way we could start a little earlier?”

Lyco shook her head. “I’m working tomorrow.”

With nothing left to say, she got up and started walking back to the yellow-lit streets. Raskin started following, thought for a moment, then called, “Lyco!”

She whipped her head around.

“I… don’t have my housekeys with me. And I don’t want to go back to the Entei tonight after what happened. Can we… sit down somewhere nicer for a bit? Just until Sid will be finished.”

Lyco’s face brightened. Or perhaps it was just the glowing lights from behind her.

“Actually, I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “Let’s start training _now_.”

* * *

Once Lyco and Raskin had gone, the basement was silent. A tide of heads turned from the stairs the two had disappeared from to Sid. The quilava gulped. What had happened to Raskin? Had Lyco known something he hadn’t? What would he do now?

“Um,” he said. He looked to the ring for guidance, then remembered that the ring was where everything had stemmed from. Tyler stood alone in the middle of it, his face sheepish.

“I didn’t do nothing to him, Smokey. You saw, didn’t ya? I don’t know what happened to him!”

“Yes, I believe you,” Sid said.

The crowd continued to be statues between them. There was only one way out of this that Sid knew.

“I suppose Tyler wins this fight,” he murmured—then, finding his voice, “Who’ll be next to take him on? He looks strong, so you’d better be up for it!”

There was shuffling amongst the crowd, mutterings between pokémon. Sid frowned. _Did I go a bit overboard on Tyler-hype?_

He waited a few moments, but no one looked keen to step forwards. His hopeful glances were consistently avoided.

Sid sighed. There looked like only one solution.

“I’ll challenge him, then!” he announced, stepping forwards. “Luis!” He scanned the area until finding the zangoose’s startled gaze. “You’re in charge of this fight. Get on the crates and count us in. You remember all the rules and things?”

Luis was frozen for a moment, then nodded overzealously, as if to break out of his own stupor. “Yessir!”

As the crowd parted to let Luis though, Sid stepped into the arena. He properly considered Tyler for the first time. Then something occurred to him.

“How did you find this place?” he asked, quiet enough so that the surrounding pokémon couldn’t hear. “None of us gave you any information. Do you know someone here?”

“Nah, mate,” Tyler said, smirking. “I been following you’s movements. Seen you come here often. T’was just a bit of deduction.”

Sid stared at the nidoran, anger boiling in his stomach. “You _followed_ us? How could you even…?”

“I know what district you’re in,” Tyler said, shrugging. “Ain’t that hard, mate.”

Sid was interrupted by Luis’s call from the crates. “On the count of three… I guess.” 

Sid scowled at Tyler. There was no time for verbals now. 

Maybe this was good, though. If he could channel this anger into his fighting, he’d be even stronger. Sid thought back to his old grievances with Tyler. Attacking him and Raskin based on nothing but an invasion of space. Charging them exorbitant money because they had to find Lyco.

He growled into the floor. _Mister Smokey-Cough._

“One...”

And, come to think of it, even if Tyler hadn’t done anything _clearly_ wrong to Raskin, he should have seen that the guy wasn’t comfortable about fighting!

“Two…”

Yes, things were different now. Sid had been training hard. He had the will of this room on his side. He was in charge.

“Uh—fight!”

* * *

The streets were already dark at this hour, but the city light seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer as they made the long walk to Oldden. It was closing in on midnight. Raskin shivered again.

It was practically pitch-black once they entered the former city. Raskin could only assume that Lyco’s years of experience walking the muddy paths were what guided her towards the stark, wooden box she called a house. No stragglers were inside this time when she opened the door, but the rest of the room was as empty as usual, save for a pile of rocks and some hay in one corner. That was until she reached under the hay, pulling out a candle and box of matches. She set the candle on the sill of one of the room’s tiny windows, and lit it. The light was meagre, but Raskin was just glad to be able to see again.

“So… what is the plan, exactly?” he said. 

“Stand over there,” Lyco said, pointing out a spot near the centre of the room. Once he was there, she moved to a few paces away. “For now, I’ll just tackle you. If that triggers the same feelings in you as before, try to push them away. We’ll see what happens from there.”

“Alright,” Raskin said, lowering his body into what seemed like a more fighting stance.

Lyco must have noticed his hesitance, for she said, “This is for _you_ , Raskin. It’s on you to make it work.” She paused. “Also, turn your shoulder into me if you don’t want to get hit in the face.”

 _Right._ Raskin took a deep breath and did as she said, maintaining eye contact with the lycanroc. Immediately he felt all four limbs tremble, his chest tightening. He willed himself desperately to be stronger, but when he looked up at Lyco again she was already darting towards, her white mane glowing in the candlelight just like the lucario’s fist had that day.

And so, he jumped out of the way. It was stronger than him. He didn’t need another glance to know Lyco’s burning disappointment as he righted himself.

Numerous tackles passed with frustratingly little progress. After the first attempt, Raskin was at least able to stay still before Lyco hit him. But that was far from the end of his problems. Lyco pointed out his trembling body, and how his eyes shut long before she made contact. She barked at him to leap back to his feet after going down. Rather than becoming numb to the response his body gave to being attacked, that anxious state seemed to make itself the norm.

It was to his immense relief when Lyco told him to rest for a moment. 

Raskin sat down limply on the wooden floor. Getting a nudge to his head, he looked up. Lyco held out a flask of water to him. “Thanks,” he murmured, suddenly realising how dry his mouth felt.

As his pulse gradually slowed, previous worries began surfacing, with even more venom—and justification—than before.

_What if this method just won’t work? What then? Will I be cast out from Fight Den forever, just because I’m too inept to do the job properly?_

Across the room, Lyco clicked her tongue. “I think we should try something different.”

Raskin frowned; he didn’t feel much like trying anything right now. “Different in what way?”

“Sparring,” Lyco replied. She noticed his bemused look, and added, “Like a practice fight. The important thing is that I want _you_ to try attacking. Unlike the tackling, that’s not something that you can’t… uh…”

“Yes, that’s true,” Raskin said. “At least… I think so.”

“Right. So, you try attacking me now. We’ll take it from there. Okay?”

Raskin nodded. He didn’t feel much hope, but there were no other options. He walked back to the middle of the room, a few feet from Lyco. 

Attacking. He cast his mind back through all the duels he’d watched in the past two sessions of Fight Den. What could he learn from that?

Lots of pokémon attacked with their claws. He had claws, so that could work. There was also the tackling that seemed very popular. Anyone could do that. Although what was the best way—should he be leading with his front legs, like a big jump, or would he get more power going with his side—?

“Oi!” Lyco called from across the room. Raskin’s head shot up.

“I didn’t ask you to work out the square root of this room’s bloody… circumference,” she scolded. “Attack me!”

Deciding on a scratch, Raskin stepped forwards tentatively. Almost immediately his anxiety returned, his limbs feeling like they were anchored to the ground. He looked away from Lyco, chewing on his mouth in the hopes that would at least hold his fractured emotions together. 

He couldn’t do it, not even with Lyco’s back up plan. This really was the end for him.

“Raskin?!” Lyco barked. “I’m still waiting!”

He couldn’t look up—he knew that seeing the inevitable rage on the lycanroc’s face would tip him over the edge.

“Raskin.” There was a coldness to her voice this time. “Are you really so weak that you can’t even bear attacking me? Is there really that little fight inside you? LOOK AT ME!”

Raskin’s head shot up, more out of involuntary shock than anything. Lyco gave a huff of satisfaction.

“You have no idea how good you have it,” she said. “You live in a city with beds, warmth, food on demand. Our ancestors had to hunt and scrap for all of that. They would be turning in their graves if they saw what their future had become. And what about your parents? You think your father would be happy that _this_ was the son he went to prison for? Or your mother, wherever the fuck she is. Maybe this is why she isn’t with you anymore—”

The world around Lyco disappeared. Raskin sprinted forwards, raised a foreleg and swung at her. She swerved away, then nudged his side with an elbow. Raskin could only flail at the air for a moment before crashing to the floor. 

Lyco let out a shriek of laughter. “I _knew_ it was in there somewhere! We just—”

Raskin scrambled up, snarling furiously, and lunged at her. This time he caught Lyco with a leg, but the impact only made her stumble backwards. 

“Hey! Raskin, calm down!” She picked up a handful of small rocks and threw them at his face, forcing him back a little. “Calm!”

Raskin hissed through his nostrils, heart thumping. “My mother died when I was still a kit. She fought illness for years. How _dare_ you even suggest that it was because of me—!”

“I didn’t know!” Lyco said, holding her paws up defensively. “I swear, I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?! Why are you smiling, then?” Raskin demanded. It took great effort—as well as his better judgement—not to lunge at her again. 

The lycanroc’s smugness did not waver. “Because you _attacked_ me.”

Raskin froze. He suddenly became conscious of what had just happened. Of why they were even here. “I… I did,” he said dumbly.

“I knew you could do it,” Lyco said. “It just took a bit of… _prompting_ to bring to the surface.”

Raskin frowned. He wanted to say that Lyco shouldn’t have gone to the lengths she did to make that happen. But if she hadn’t, he would be as stuck as he was a minute ago.

“What now, then?” he said.

“What now?” Lyco chuckled. “Well, even though your attacks were… full-blooded, there were lots of mistakes. Especially in the scratch. Do you have any ideas where?”

Raskin thought. He barely remembered the actual movements. Just the raging hatred he had felt in that moment. “...No.”

“Okay. This is what you looked like when you used your claws.”

Lyco crouched in front of an invisible opponent, then took a comically large swing with one arm that went from her shoulder to almost touching the ground. She stumbled over herself dramatically.

Raskin frowned. “I don’t think it was that bad.”

“Oh, it was,” Lyco said matter-of-factly. “The power of a scratch should come more from your wrist than your arm—or leg, whatever. If you keep a smaller motion, you’ll get more power in the attack and it won’t make you flail like a pidgey learning to fly.”

Raskin nodded, keeping a tired sigh to himself. It _sounded_ reasonable.

“Another thing,” Lyco added. “Don’t reveal your claws until you’re just about to bring them down. Extending them as early as you did made it clear to me what you were about to do, even though you were moving quickly.”

Raskin nodded again. He’d have to get more accustomed to flexing his claw muscles… or whatever they were. 

Then, thinking over her words, he had a sudden rush of abandon. “Who taught you to fight?” he said.

Lyco froze, her eyes narrowing. “Excuse me?”

Raskin’s mind raced to respond. “This teaching of yours… it’s very precise. Instructive.”

“Is that not what you want?”

Raskin smiled. _Snappy. I must be getting somewhere._ “I’m just saying, I’d be surprised if you taught it all to yourself.”

Lyco scowled at him, but didn’t snap again. “My parents,” she said eventually. “You could say that they taught me the things I believe in now. Fighting was a part of that.”

“ _How_ did they teach you?” Raskin said. “Surely you couldn’t have fought anywhere in the city.”

“’Course not. They brought me here.”

“This exact house?”

Lyco shook her head. “I built this one.”

An abrupt silence came over them when the lycanroc didn’t elaborate. But Raskin wasn’t satisfied.

“You never addressed what I said outside the Entei earlier. This stuff about your parents is probably the first personal detail you’ve shared with either me or Sid. Why won’t you tell us anything about you? Can’t you see it’s curious to us?”

Lyco regarded him levelly. “I think you know more than enough. I don’t need to be your friend, Raskin. We just share an ambition.”

“But—”

“Enough!” Lyco snapped. “We’re wasting time. Get up, and attack me again.

Raskin sighed inwardly. _You refuse to talk about yourself, yet have no trouble insulting my family that you’ve never met,_ was what he wanted to say. But he knew that Lyco was right—there were more important things to focus on. 

What were her instructions to him again? Right, his scratching motion. And don’t reveal claws so early.

He stepped up to Lyco, more carefully this time. It was easier to get into the zen-like state of before—he just recalled what Lyco had said, how he had felt, that smug look on her face, and his limbs became unstuck. 

He paused for a moment in front of her, thinking through the scratching motion in his head, then lunged and extended and swung. He felt a ripping sensation in his paw, then Lyco stepped back, grunting.

It _connected_!

“Don’t just stand there admiring yourself!” Lyco growled. She suddenly launched herself at him.

Raskin leapt away as fast he could, managing to escape with just a glancing blow to the side of his head. He winced as it started stinging—Lyco had connected with something sharp. But Lyco was already back to her feet, so he spun and tried another scratch, this time with his left paw in the hopes of catching her out.

Lyco beat away his paw with one of her own as it came down. Then her opposite arm lashed out from nowhere, catching Raskin just below the neck. He cried out in surprise, backing away.

Then he noticed Lyco had paused. She was hunched over, seemingly short of breath. Getting an idea, Raskin did another quick mental imagining, then jumped towards Lyco. He intended to lead with his shoulder, as she liked to, but twisted too much and ended up kicking out with his back legs. Even though she swerved away, one of them caught her on the muzzle.

He got a sudden rush of energy at the contact, like a spark of electricity in his bones. It felt… thrilling.

“That’s enough!” Lyco said, holding a paw up. “I’ve been pushing my EFS enough tonight.”

It took a moment to Raskin to connect the dots— her Energy Fatigue Syndrome. His excitement faded. “Are you alright?”

Lyco chuckled. She seemed to be _grinning_ , long canines poking out of her mouth. “Fine,” she said. “That was much better though. Let’s stop for tonight.”

The moment Raskin relaxed, he felt his own fatigue like a ton of bricks. They had been going for what felt like at least an hour, virtually non-stop. No wonder Lyco needed a break.

For a second, he allowed himself a private smile. In the end, things hadn’t turned out so bad. There was hope for his fighting nature yet.

He moved towards the door. The pitch-black unknowns of Oldden were even less appealing when coupled with the aching in his legs that had just become apparent. He sighed. “This’ll be a nice walk back.”

“Hm?” Lyco grunted, looking up. “Didn’t I tell you? You’re sleeping here tonight.”

Raskin froze. “No, you did _not_. How do you figure that out?”

Annoyingly, the edge in his voice seemed to only amuse Lyco. “Well, you said it yourself. It’s a long walk from here in your state. There’ll be police patrolling the streets too. How d’you plan to explain your presence to them, way after curfew?”

“I…” Raskin’s mind didn’t seem to be at its usual sharpness.

“And you don’t have a day job now, so there’s no rush to get back.”

“I… suppose,” Raskin said, defeated.

He turned back into the room, casting a gaze over the pile of hay at one end that seemed to be the bed. “Is that all there is?”

Lyco gave a frustrated huff, shaking her head. She started pulling an end off the hay. “You know, our ancestors would have given an arm and a leg for a bed like this.”

“That doesn’t mean _I_ should be happy with it.”

“Those ancestors also knew how to fight,” Lyco continued. “Maybe you could learn something from them. Here.” She chucked the new pile of hay at him; Raskin barely brought his forelegs up in time to stop the bundle knocking him to the ground for the fiftieth time that day.

“If it’s not comfortable, try flattening it with your paws,” Lyco said, stretching out on the well-worn pile she had left herself. “Oh, and watch out for insects. Night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Talgoran and Shadow of Antioch for their help with this chapter :)


	9. The Commander

For the first time in his life, Shadow was early for a meeting.

He hated meetings. Had he known how much police work involved sitting in those stuffy rooms, having to listen to a grizzled, grey-furred chief mumble on about this law and that protocol, he might have thought twice about devoting himself to the profession.

_ Then again _ , he thought as he entered the foyer of the Government Head Offices,  _ all jobs have their necessary evils. There are worse ways to spend an hour or two… probably. _

It was his first time in the private building, and so far he wasn’t too impressed. This entrance room was nothing but a reception desk and an elevator on one side. Easy to navigate, perhaps, but about as much flair as a prison cell.

He strolled inside the elevator and searched for the right floor. Then he frowned.

“I need to access the President’s floor,” he said, addressing the receptionist as he stepped out. “Why is it locked?”

“It’s only for authorised personnel,” the kirlia replied sternly.

Shadow raised an eyebrow. “I’m already in your private building. Can you let me in?”

“I’ll need identification.”

Shadow gestured to the scarf around his neck—white, studded with flecks of gold. “This not enough?”

“Afraid not,” the kirlia replied. She didn’t seem fazed by him, annoyingly. “I require your name and stated business.”

Shadow sighed. “Shadow Zoroark. The President invited me to a meeting. No details were given.”

The kirlia tapped away at her computer screen, and finally was satisfied.

A minute later, Shadow stepped out of the elevator. The first thing he noticed were the tall portraits hanging either side of him. Previous presidents. All thirty-two of them, he realised, as he searched the hallway for the door he needed—no one had actually  _ told  _ him where to go other than this floor. The grand double-doors straight ahead looked the only possibility.

The portraits seemed to be ordered chronologically, going back in time the further along he walked. Shadow frowned—surely there had been access to neither painting materials nor talented artists in the early days of Deepden. Especially not for Grovyle, the very first president, whose portrait showed the wily smile that had supposedly inspired a whole city to form.  _ Some nostalgic president wanted them all done _ , Shadow supposed.

Along with the portraits, this hall was a little more what Shadow had expected, boasting plush carpeting and white marbled walls. Yet the air of conventionality remained, which disappointed him. He would have plenty of changes to make.

He stopped in front of the double-doors, distracted by a long window to the side of it. The Head Office was not the tallest building in Deepden, but it had been built atop a wide mound in the centre of the city. Past the small grounds that fronted the Office, he could see practically an entire half of Deepden. He looked down at the little figures of civilians scurrying around in streets among the high-rises, and a small smile escaped his mouth. 

Now, he felt ready to push open the double-doors.

“The ministry of health reports a rather concerning trend…”

The voice stopped at once as he entered the room, and what seemed like a thousand eyes fixed upon him. President Flygon sat at the end of a long conference table—again, lamentably ordinary—with an assortment of political bigwigs either side of her. She glanced at Shadow, then jabbed one of her arms to the left. “Over there. You’re late.”

Shadow blinked. “I’m not—”

He saw the clock above Flygon’s head, showing three minutes past the hour, and stopped.  _ Oh. Fuck. That damned receptionist… _

To the side of the room were a handful of people Shadow was more familiar with—fellow Police Commanders, wearing the same gold-studded scarves as him. Most of them failed to keep the contempt out of their gazes, which made him smirk. _Let them be jealous._ _They were probably still making tea at my age._

“Go on,” Flygon said to a fidgety teddiursa standing nearby. The teddiursa resumed speaking.

“The ministry of health, President. They report that admissions for psychological issues such as depression and anxiety have increased thirty percent over the past year, and facilities are already pushing capacity. They wonder if perhaps—”

“I don’t think now is the time for this discussion,” Flygon interrupted harshly. “Come back in an hour, Simon. And make sure that statistic isn’t reported for now.”

“Y-yes President,” the teddiursa said. He skittered out of the room, only slowing to make sure the doors closed quietly.

Flygon cleared her throat, then turned to the gathered commanders. “I am pleased you could all attend today. I apologise for the lack of notice, but the information I am about to provide is strictly confidential. It should not even leave this room.

“I recently received two pieces of concerning police reports, both from around the Harmony district. Firstly, several Pokémon have been having…  _ unusual  _ accidents. A sudden burst of water from a psyduck causing a machinery breakdown. A minor fire in a warehouse with a single growlithe present. It would seem from these that some pokémon have greater access to their fighting abilities than they should—and as a result, they do not know how to control them. Secondly, two patrols in the district, on different days, noted a small group of pokémon breaking curfew, being out of breath, and carrying minor injuries. When questioned by officers, they shied away from giving details.” 

“Now, there are a myriad of theories for why these events happened; indeed, it could be a coincidence that both occurred in the same area. But I will be assuming the most likely and, unfortunately, the worst case scenario. That is: there is an underground organisation, hidden away somewhere in the city, where pokémon come to fight each other.”

A few gasps rose from the politicians’ table. Shadow raised his eyebrows.  _ A hidden fighting arena for civilians?  _ Something about the idea struck a chord in him, but he couldn’t place what.

“It should be obvious why such an organisation could be so damaging,” Flygon continued. “Reported cases of street fights have been falling for many years now, to the point of… what was it, Dalbert?”

“One-hundred-and-seven incidents last year,” someone at the table replied.

“One-hundred-and-seven! This organisation could contribute to half that number in a single night. So, it is imperative we find the cause of these incidents—and if it is the work of an organisation, it is even more imperative that we stop it growing further. That is why I want you all to increase the volume of officers on your patrols.  _ All  _ of them. Tell them to be especially alert for—”

Shadow scoffed. A little too loudly, it transpired, when Flygon abruptly stopped. “Yes, Zoroark?” she said harshly.

“Well… surely that’s not going to work,” Shadow said, quickly regaining his composure. “Whoever’s behind this group wouldn’t have gotten this far without a plan to keep it secret.”

“And what would you have your forces do instead?”

Shadow wasn’t expecting such a direct question from the most powerful pokémon in the known world. Still, he wouldn’t be shown up on his first meeting with her. “Far more severity,” he said. “Like… I dunno, stationing officers on every street, all hours of the day. Inspecting public spaces that look at all suspicious. Sending out a message to those fools that they won’t get away from us.”

“I take your point,” Flygon said, “but we must avoid our city becoming one that lives in fear. The less subtle we are with police measures, the more people are likely to ask questions. Questions like ‘What has the police so worried?’ or ‘Is something big happening under our noses?’ We do not—no, we  _ cannot  _ afford to let people seek these answers for themselves, else this group may quickly become too powerful to control. So for now, be cautious. You may investigate this matter amongst yourselves, but do  _ not _ let word of it escape to anyone else, not even your subordinates. With all being well, the problem will be over soon enough.”

As Flygon dismissed the group of them, the link Shadow had been grasping at suddenly came to him. “Wait!” he exclaimed, just as the commanders started moving out. Once again, he held the room’s confused attention.

“I know who might be behind it,” he said.

Flygon’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Obviously I can’t be sure,” he said calmly, realising how absurd his sudden prediction sounded. “But there’s only one pokémon I know who would dare try something like this.”

* * *

Raskin sat upstairs in the White Entei, twiddling his paws nervously. Three weeks had passed since Lyco had carried him out of Fight Den mid-session, and since then he had trained with her almost every evening—the only exceptions being when Lyco had Fight Den to attend. After having what he felt like was a breakthrough in their first session, Raskin wanted to return with her immediately, but Lyco had refused.

_ “Yes, you might have improved,” she said one night, tired of batting away the question without any discourse. “But you’re still terrible.” _

_ Raskin’s ears dropped. “Oh. Thanks.” _

_ “Not that it’s your fault exactly,” Lyco added. “But… put it this way. It’s obvious that these are movements your body has never made before.” _

_ “Doesn’t that apply to almost everyone fighting?” _

_ Lyco frowned. “Not to the same extent.” _

_ “Great,” Raskin muttered. “So I’m not just bad, I’m really bad.” _

_ “Well, you  _ were  _ very bad,” Lyco said. “Now I’d say you’re just ‘bad’. That’s progress.” _

Sid sat down opposite him, cradling a copper-coloured drink. Raskin eyed the glass suspiciously. “That doesn’t look like beer.”

“It’s cinnamon whiskey,” Sid said cheerfully. “You wanna try some?”

“Um… I’ll pass,” Raskin said. “Can I ask… why you’re drinking it?”

“It helps warm up my fire-chords,” Sid said, as if ‘fire-chords’ was a perfectly common word. “Marginal gains, y’know?”

Raskin nodded slowly. “I see.”

“Anyway, Rasky,” Sid continued. “I owe you an apology.”

Raskin raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“I never expected this partnership between you and Crazy-Fur to work out.”

“Right.” Raskin smiled. “I remember you telling me so.”

_ “You did WHAT?” Sid had exclaimed, once he had let Raskin into their apartment. “You trained with Lyco? Then you slept in the same room as her?!” _

_ “Sid, she’s not a psychopath,” Raskin said wearily. He had expected this reaction; he’d probably react the same way if they were on opposite sides. _

_ “Maybe not, a psychopath, but…” Sid scratched his head. “A something… path. A  _ dangerous  _ path. Look, are you sure you’re safe with her?” _

_ “Yes,” Raskin said. “I understand her more than I did before.” _

_ “Oh? How much?” Sid asked.  _

_ Raskin threw up his arms in bemusement. “Enough?” _

Sid took a sip of whiskey, wincing slightly as he swallowed, then shook his head vigorously. “Ahhh. You think you’re gonna carry on training with her?”

“She wants me to,” Raskin said. “I don’t see why not. Apparently I’ve still got a long way to go on the fighting front.”

Sid smiled. “I look forward to judging it.”

Raskin was pleased to see no flickers of doubt in the quilava’s contented eyes. Sid had predictably asked if he could join in their training sessions—like Raskin, he had heaps of free time now, and Raskin had already seen the lengths he would go to be able to practice. But Lyco had been firm, and in fairness Raskin agreed with her. Sid was too strong for Raskin to be able to spar properly with, and the sessions were often slow and repetitive. Sid would grow impatient very quickly.

Fortunately, he had found an alternative solution. By paying Steela a little bit extra—though not much, because she found the whole arrangement baffling—Sid used her basement to train in at night. Without any customers upstairs, no one would hear him banging about. He had even managed to get hold of a body-sized rucksack and stuff it with dirt and compost and heavens-knew what else to make it an appropriate training dummy.

The downsides were that, because of the midnight curfew and Steela owning the only set of keys to the pub, he had to stay in the basement until morning. Naturally, Sid had managed this by changing his sleep schedule to become virtually nocturnal. 

With Raskin being absent from the last three weeks’ worth of Fight Den, his only updates had been from Sid and Lyco. Both had been positive in their different ways.

“It’s amazing!” Sid had exclaimed upon arriving late back at the apartment. “Every session there’s new ‘mon fighting, new attacks I’ve never seen before… you never know what’s gonna happen next.”

“It’s fine,” went Lyco’s default response, usually with a shrug. “Haven’t been any serious injuries or big fall-outs between pokémon yet, so I guess that’s good.”

Raskin was relieved to finally be back and able to see the Den’s development for himself, having had to trust the two pokémon’s words entirely. Well, that wasn’t entirely true—watching their earnings grow was another good indicator of how it was going.

Raskin had even kept quiet about his absence from their other friends like Luis, not wanting to spread any gossip or rumours before he returned. Though it wasn’t as if he missed out on lots of gatherings as a result. The Den seemed to have already become the place to be.

To avoid fielding the inevitable questions about where he had been, Raskin headed downstairs as soon as pokémon began arriving at the Entei. In the basement’s torchlight, he noticed that more graffiti had already been added to the walls, just like Sid had envisioned. The quality of work was variable: alongside a genuinely impressive image of a snivy whipping its vines out were some indecipherable symbols, and even just words and nicknames written with fancy letters. Yet together, it all made Raskin smile—a joint expression of the joy and freedom that Fight Den gave these pokémon.

Lyco joined him on the upturned crates at the back. At least those were still familiar.

“Remember your legwork,” she said, as they watched the gradual stream of pokémon come down the stairs. “Saves you a lot of needless diving around.”

“I know,” Raskin said, a tad irritably. He couldn’t ignore the curious looks being directed his way from arriving pokémon, though they shouldn’t have surprised him.

By the time Sid came down, the room was bustling with pokémon once again. Raskin estimated more heads than the fifty he’d taken in three weeks ago.

“All locked up and ready,” Sid said to them, grinning. “Do you wanna introduce yourself, Rasky?”

Raskin hesitated, then shook his head. “You should do it.” From the way Sid and Lyco had spoken, the quilava’s word was gospel to these pokémon.

Sid nodded. He picked up a long, hollow object, shaped like a horn with holes at both ends.

Raskin stared. “What is that?”

“Something I dug up at  _ Poké Pares _ . Not bad for one-fifty, eh?”

“But… what does it  _ do _ ?”

“Oh, right.” Sid grinned, standing up on the crate. He put his mouth to the small end of the horn, and a low, booming note sounded. It reminded Raskin of the kind of thing pokémon had supposedly used when they worked in ‘packs’. Sid immediately had the room’s attention.

“Welcome to Fight Den, everyone!” he called. “Before we get brawling, as usual, we must run over the basic rules.”

Sid had clearly revised Raskin’s notebook well, reciting the rules flawlessly and even throwing a couple of jokes in.

“Next, as you might have noticed, we have an old face back with us today!” Sid gestured for Raskin to stand, and when the nickit did so, Sid flung an arm around him. “I know some of you have been concerned about what happened a few weeks ago, but Rasky is back with us now, and he’s here to stay!”

The crowd gave a respectable, if not ecstatic level of applause and whoops.

“And to prove it to any of you still in doubt, he’s pledged to take part in the first fight of the night. So…” Sid raised an eyebrow dramatically to his friend. “Is there anyone you have in mind, Rasky?”

This was a fight Raskin  _ had  _ been prepared for. He had kept an eye out for Tyler in the crowd—that seemed the  _ rightest  _ way to return, finishing the fight he had left before—but caught no sight of a nidoran. He’d have to pick someone else. Someone he trusted not to go easy on him, but to fight in good spirit…

His gaze found an ivysaur, looking bright-eyed and affable.  _ Perfect! _

“Aster!” he said. “Are you up for it?”

Though clearly surprised, the ivysaur grinned back at him. “I’d be honoured.”

“Excellent!” Sid said. “Now lastly, before we get started, does anyone have any questions or feedback for us?”

An espurr’s paw shot up at once. Raskin recognised her from previous Dens. “Aeris?” Sid asked, with a slight weariness.

“There are more people here than ever,” the small pokémon said. “But still only one arena, and one block of time for us. I’m worried that eventually it’s going to be hard to even find  _ one _ fight before the night is up. Do you agree this is a problem? Do you have any solutions?”

Sid paled at the challenging tone in her voice. “Well, um… I think…”

“Maybe,” Lyco said, stepping forwards, “you should be grateful for what we  _ do  _ have rather than demanding more already?”

Alarm bells rang in Raskin’s head. He stepped forward onto Sid’s opposite flank. “What Lyco means to say is… the volume of interest we’ve had the first three weeks has surprised all of us,” he said. “Unfortunately, the illegality of what we’re doing is a big constraint. Every change we make has to be carefully considered to make sure it keeps the whole operation safe. We all want Fight Den to become a huge success, but it can’t happen overnight. For now, just try and be patient with us.”

Aeris looked a little disgruntled, but nodded and gave no further reply. Sid glanced at Raskin, beaming. Raskin just let out a silent sigh of relief. 

“Anything else?” Sid asked. “Yes, Luis?”

The zangoose was a regular and reassuring presence at the Den. “I was just thinking, when you addressed us at the start,” he said. “It would be cool if we could have a collective name. Rather than just, ‘welcome Fight Den’, or ‘welcome everyone’, y’know?”

Sid nodded. “Sounds like a great idea! Did you have any names in mind?”

Luis shrugged. “There’s ‘fighters’, but it seemed a bit too on-the-nose…”

“Battlers!” someone shouted from the crowd. The response was indifferent. Then suddenly names came from every direction.

“Warriors!”

“Heroes!”

“Brawlers!”

“Elementals!”

Lyco, frowning at the cacophony, stepped forwards and raised a paw commandingly. The room quietened.

“How about ‘Rebels’?” she said. “After all, that’s what we are. The government don’t want us to fight, but they don’t know what’s good for us. We’re doing what’s right, not what’s in their rulebook.”

Luis nodded approvingly. “Rebels… I like it.”

“I do too!” Sid said.

A wave of agreement spread across the room. Yet Raskin found himself frowning. It felt unusual for Lyco to make a suggestion like this—she normally stuck to logistical matters. But then, when it went down well with everyone, why should he care?

“Any more questions? No? Alright!” Sid grabbed Raskin and unceremoniously thrust him forwards. “Raskin, Aster, you’re up!”

Raskin navigated through the crowd until he reached one end of the arena. At the start of his training with Lyco, he had struggled to get into what she called the ‘fighting mindset’—the place where his worries and anxieties were discarded, his adolescent memories wouldn’t hurt him, and all that mattered was the fight. He had needed to think angry thoughts, usually about Lyco, or even have Lyco do that work for him, as she had so spectacularly the first time.

Fortunately, this state of mind was starting to become second nature to him. It was especially a relief because he struggled to think about Lyco in such negative terms anymore. She had already put in an enormous amount of time on his behalf—for that, he could only be grateful.

He snapped his mind back to reality. Aster. Raskin remembered the ‘mon’s long vines from his first fight with the raticate, Chaka. He’d need to stay alert at all times. Perhaps he could take advantage of speed; Aster’s body didn’t look set up for running.

“On your marks,” Sid announced. The drum—was it still Bushu playing it?—began beating an uncertain rhythm.

“I won’t go easy on you,” Aster said, shifting his feet.

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Raskin replied.

“Get set… FIGHT!”

The moment the word left Sid’s mouth, Raskin found a vine shooting towards him. It slapped him into the ground before he even had time to yelp.

A mantra from Lyco’s training shouted at him.  _ Never stay on the ground. If you’re still, you’re an easy target. Don’t expect pokémon to show mercy. _

He leapt back up and started circling the arena. Aster, one vine hovering menacingly in front of him, started to do the same. Raskin recalled that last time, Aster held two vines in front of him. Did just the one make him more agile?

_ I’ll have to catch him by surprise,  _ Raskin thought as they moved.  _ Wait for a moment where the distance between us is just a little closer… now! _

He took two quick steps then launched towards the ivysaur. Aster didn’t dodge but did throw his body around, swatting Raskin away with his pink bulb. Raskin skidded backwards and, seeing the white edges of the arena behind him, dug his claws into the stone floor. The screech it created made him want to remove his paws and shove them in his ears. But they created just enough friction to keep him in-bounds.

_ Mew _ ,  _ Aster’s seriously better than I remember. Need to figure out— _

He was still on the ground. He’d forgotten Lyco’s golden rule.

A barrage of thin, thorny  _ things _ shot out towards him. Each one stung like a giant swarm of fleas was on him. 

Wincing, he rolled away from the missiles. They were  _ leaves _ , he realised. Surely leaves couldn’t hurt that much, even razor-sharp ones!

He rose to his feet once again. His muscles were already protesting. Aster was far too good; he was going to lose with a whimper if he didn’t come up with something.

The vine whipped at him again. Simply dodging didn’t deter Aster; as long as the ivysaur kept attacking, Raskin could do nothing but duck between blow after blow. An over-step made him stumble, and one whip caught the top of his ear, almost tipping him over. Raskin growled with frustration, and rashly threw up a paw to try swatting the next vine away.

Something amazing happened.

His paw’s black colour seemed to glow; the white claws gained a dark sheen. His paw not only batted away Aster’s vine, but it cut clean through the tip. The end of the vine dropped to the floor with barely a sound. It didn’t look so threatening without a body.

Aster yelped, drawing back the rest of the vine at once. The crowd gave cries of surprise and approval, but it felt distant to Raskin, like he was in a bubble. Something else was happening to him. His vision had changed; the room became brighter and sharper. Like he’d put on those eye-glasses the old humans once wore.

He focused back on Aster. His paw still glowed.  _ If this could slash through his vine, think of what it might do to his scales! _

A brief wave of nausea hit him at that thought, but he managed to shake it off. As Lyco reminded him, fighting was a  _ good _ thing.

He hurtled towards Aster, but then the ivysaur raised his bulb and loosed another flurry of leaves. Raskin tried to run through them, but they were like an avalanche of thorns. He felt himself weaken rapidly. By the time Aster had finished, Raskin had dropped to the floor.

He heard the crowd counting to five and willed himself to fight on, but it was no use. Even the brief flash of light in his paws—and apparently his mind too—had vanished.  _ Damn it!  _ he thought, wanting to pound the floor in frustration.

“All right, Aster is the winner!” Sid cried.

Raskin was grateful to Sid for not bringing attention to his defeat. The applause of the crowd was probably all for Aster, but that was fine. He was simply back amongst the club, accepted by them.

Aster held out a teal-coloured paw to help him up, which Raskin was more grateful for than he wished to let on.

“Will your vine be alright?” he asked. “Sorry about that…”

Aster laughed, sounding surprised. “Of course it will! They grow back in no time. I’d be seriously worried if they were that fragile.”

“Oh… I suppose,” Raskin said, a little embarrassed. “But hey, when did you get so good at this? That was really impressive.”

Aster smiled bashfully. “Just been practicing, I guess.”

“Even so, we’ve only run, what, eight Fight Dens so far.”

“Oh, well, it’s not just that,” Aster said, shifting paws. “There’s quite a lot Seria and I can do at home. Obviously, it’s not the same as here, but—”

“What?” Raskin said, alarmed. He had Aster and his partner down as the careful types who just happened to enjoy fighting. “Isn’t that risking a hell of a lot if someone finds out?”

“We’re very careful,” Aster said easily. Their attention was diverted then by the deciding of Aster’s next opponent, and Raskin had no choice but to move away.

He had made it clear to Sid that practicing moves in the apartment was ill-advised. He thought most ‘mon would have the common sense to already know that. But what if everyone in this room was risking themselves, and even Fight Den as whole, just to improve their skills?

He got back to the crates, sitting beside Lyco. Sid had disappeared somewhere into the crowd.

“Do you still think you don’t have a long way to go?” she said. The question was smug, as she often was, but Raskin detected a hint of encouragement there as well.

“I didn’t realise the standard had gotten so high,” he admitted. “But listen: something happened to me in there. When I managed to slash off part of Aster’s vine, I—”

“Your claws turned dark,” Lyco said. “I saw.”

“R-right! I’ve never felt anything like that before. Uh, is it good?”

“Of course it’s good!” Lyco snapped, cuffing him around the ear. “Why wouldn’t it be? You used your Energy, if only unintentionally. That’s how I move rocks, or Sid breathes fire.”

“My Energy...” Raskin recalled Lyco mentioning the term once before. He was excited for a moment, then frowned. “What does that mean for me, though?”

“Well, you’re a dark-type, aren’t you?”

Raskin nodded tentatively.

“Then I suppose you’ll learn…” Lyco’s expression suddenly dimmed. 

“Hm?” Raskin said. “What is it?”

Lyco shrugged. “I don’t really know what you can do. It’s not obvious like it is with some other types.”

“...Oh.” 

“But maybe it’s better if you find out yourself. Gives you plenty of incentive to keep learning.”

Raskin nodded, a little deflated. “Don’t you know  _ anything _ about it?”

“No!”

* * *

Raskin’s eyes were watering. His tendons felt on the verge of snapping. But he couldn’t stop now. He was so close…

He gritted his teeth and made one final push. Halfway through he worried he might pass out, but finally he reached the top of the apartment steps, and put down his shopping bags with an exhausted sigh. He dropped to all-fours, then the ground.

_ I hate this. Why can’t Sid just do the shopping every week? He’s clearly better equipped than me… _

As it turned out, Sid had a good excuse this time. The quilava who greeted Raskin at the door had whitening fur on her front where it was once cream, and walked with a hunch so pronounced that it was as if she had never quite moved up from all-fours.

“Magasi!” Raskin said, surprised. “I didn’t know you were coming round.”

The old quilava laughed. “You know what my son is like. When he came to see me this afternoon, I was just as surprised.”

At hearing Raskin’s voice, Sid quickly stopped the washing up he was doing and came over to help carry the shopping bags in. He was never this helpful when it was just the two of them.

“So, what was the reason for your visit?” Raskin asked him once they had finished.

“Well, I—oh right, the gift!” Sid said. He took out a small, black box and passed it to Magasi. “Here. An early birthday present.”

As Magasi unclipped the buckle and looked inside, her eyes lit up. “Sid!” she exclaimed. “I… oh, wow…”

She held up the item. It was a necklace, studded with red gems that seemed to shine a different hue every time they moved. Raskin was no jewellery connoisseur, but even he could see it was beautiful.

“This is… wonderful,” Magasi said, holding a paw to her mouth, almost speechless.

“I wanted to do something special for your twentieth,” Sid said proudly. “Ain’t a lot of ‘mon that reach that number, after all.”

Magasi embraced him tearfully. “How could you afford this?” she said quietly.

Sid smiled. “It’s like I was telling you earlier. This promotion is paying a lot better. It only took a bit of saving up.”

“Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.” Magasi put the necklace on. The gems made her pale fur look as bright as if she had just Shifted. 

They chatted a little more while Magasi drank the tea Sid had made. Sid’s siblings were doing fine, she said; two of them still lived with her, while her eldest was working long hours at one of the city’s electrical plants. Sid managed to steer clear of questions about his own work.

“Well, I’d best be getting out of your hair,” Magasi said, getting up from the table. “I hope your work is going well too, Raskin. Sorry; I feel like I’ve just been talking about myself.”

Raskin had just enough control in him to smile and nod. “It’s good, thank you.”

Sid helped his mother to the door and bid her farewell. The moment she was gone, he turned around to find Raskin looking sternly at him.

“What?” Sid said. “You didn’t expect me to tell her we made all this money from an illegal fight club, did you?”

“Probably not,” Raskin admitted. “But lying about a promotion?”

“My mum knows me well, dude. She wouldn’t have been convinced if I told her I’d just saved up. She knows I’m not good at that.”

Raskin sighed. “Alright.” He didn’t want to interfere with his friend’s private business. 

He reached for the newspaper. The word ‘police’ on the front page gave him a brief spark of panic. Once he read the report though, it was clearly nothing important; just a feel-good story about an officer who had become the youngest ever to achieve some high rank.

There was a knock at the door. Raskin frowned. “Who is that now?”

Sid opened it. A scruffy-looking combusken stood there, a sofa balanced awkwardly behind him on the steps to their apartment. “This for you, mate?” he said, gesturing behind him.

“Oh! Yeah, come in, come in,” Sid said.

The sofa they bought a few days ago had completely escaped Raskin’s mind. The combusken and another worker from the furniture store set it down opposite their current one—they hadn’t figured out how to get rid of the sofa yet, and in any case didn’t want to go even a day or two without it, given the severe lack of any other furniture in the house.

When the workers had left, Sid beamed at Raskin. “See the difference already?” he said. “This sofa actually has  _ padding _ . And it’s so shiny!”

Raskin shook his head, laughing. “It does look good. You know what the real test is, though?”

Sid’s ears twitched. “Go on…”

Raskin stood up in front of the new sofa. Then, he let himself fall backwards. The soft fabric enveloped his head, like the feeling of a hot bath. He couldn’t help uttering a slight moan of delight.

Sid burst out laughing. “I can barely see you anymore.”

“I never thought,” Raskin mumbled, “that falling onto anything could feel so… orgasmic…”

Sid’s response was to belly-flop onto the sofa right next to him, which was not quite so comforting.

* * *

Raskin and Sid headed to the White Entei that evening for the next Fight Den. They arrived twenty minutes or so before their usual ‘private party’ was scheduled. This wasn’t normally much of an issue, as most of Steela’s customers now took part in Dens as well, though Raskin did notice a group of males he didn’t recognise as they entered. Steela caught their eye from behind the bar, and they went over to her.

“A couple of ‘mon came in a little while ago,” the raboot said. “Said you gave them permission to use the basement before opening time?”

“They  _ what _ ?” Raskin said. “I didn’t give anyone permission! Did you?”

Sid shook his head, shrugging.

“Why didn’t you stop them, Steela?” Raskin demanded.

Steela barely twitched an ear at his outrage. “It’s hardly a big deal. If they were banging around I wouldn’t let them in, but they said they wouldn’t make any noise, and they haven’t. I thought you’d be happy at the extra interest.”

“It’s not about that,” Raskin said, letting his anger simmer. “I’ll go and speak to them. Sid?”

Sid shrugged again. “Alright.”

Halfway down the basement stairs, Raskin realised he hadn’t asked Steela  _ who  _ the pokémon were. He had sudden visions of towering machoke and gurdurr, ready to tear his limbs off.

The reality couldn’t be more different.

It was Aeris the espurr, who barely reached Raskin’s head height, and a ralts who was only slightly taller. As he got a better view of them, he found an even more surprising sight. Aeris had her arms held in front of her, and they conjured a translucent white… bubble, it looked like, floating in the air.

She snapped her head up at the sound of their footsteps, and the bubble vanished at once.

“Oh, hi,” she said casually. “Was it okay for me to be here?”

_ No, it wasn’t!  _ Raskin wanted to say. But the first words that came out of his mouth were, “What was that… thing you made?”

“Just something I’ve been working on,” Aeris said. She put her arms out again, screwed her face up in concentration, and the bubble reappeared in a sudden vibration of air. “Try attacking me from this direction,” she said, her voice suddenly muffled and quiet.

Raskin and Sid exchanged looks. “Sure,” the quilava said.

He ran at Aeris for a standard tackle. But upon hitting the barrier, Sid fell abruptly to the ground, and though the barrier had also vanished, Aeris stood smugly over him, unharmed.

“Whoa…” Sid muttered, getting to his feet. “Can you do that again? I wanna try something else.”

Aeris shrugged and created another barrier. This time Sid blew embers into it. The flames seemed to be absorbed harmlessly into the barrier, though its colour gradually faded, disappearing just as Sid ran out of breath.

Sid whistled admiringly. “Jeez, dude. That’s so cool.”

“Maybe,” Aeris said, frowning. “Not sure what I can actually  _ do  _ with this yet. I can’t move or anything while I’m keeping it up.”

Finally, Raskin remembered what he’d come here for. "Forget about that. Aeris, Ralts, you shouldn’t be coming down here early. Especially not by lying to Steela! There are people upstairs who don’t know anything about Fight Den. Don’t you see how dangerous that is?”

“Well, Zena and I can’t practice at home,” Aeris replied with sudden venom in her voice. “And I’m trying to teach her. I can’t exactly do that while Fight Den’s happening, can I?”

Raskin took a step back. For such a diminutive ‘mon, Aeris was surprisingly aggressive. He wasn’t sure how to respond, either. Her frustration certainly seemed valid.

“Sid and I will discuss those points with Lyco,” he said at last. “For now, since you’re already down here, and you weren’t making noise… you might as well stay. But do  _ not  _ sneak in without our authority again.”

Aeris shrugged. “Okay.” She beckoned the ralts, Zena, over to her, and they started talking and gesturing, as if Raskin and Sid were already gone. With a sigh, Raskin left them to it.

Lyco arrived just before Steela shut the pub down to normal customers. She still was covered in a slight grey dust from the mine, and from the look on her face, Steela had made her a double whiskey before she could even ask. She sat down opposite Raskin and Sid. The quilava had his muzzle in a newspaper that had been left on the table.

“You okay?” Raskin asked.

Lyco grunted. “I had to work overtime ‘cause we were short on workers today. Load of bollocks.”

“Why are you still there?” Raskin asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just quit?”

Lyco shook her head at once. “Can’t raise suspicion like that.”

Before Raskin could follow up on this, the lycanroc’s gaze was suddenly drawn to Sid’s newspaper. She craned her neck over the table to get a better look. “Sid, what’s that?” she asked.

“Hm?” Sid looked up. “ _ Attack of the Buibots?  _ It’s about this group of cybernetic buizel that are trying to take over the world. Thing is, their fusion with technology has made them weak to water, their natural element—”

“Not the comic, you imbecile,” Lyco snapped. “The front page. What I can actually  _ see. _ ”

Sid looked a little put out by her dismissal, but passed over the paper anyway. “What’s so interesting about it?”

Lyco didn’t answer. She stared at the front page, wide-eyed. Her paws even shook slightly. “Gods,” she muttered. “Gods, this is bad…”

“What?” Raskin said sharply. “Why?”

Lyco looked at them. Raskin had never seen her so distressed. “This guy in the article, Shadow,” she said, “I know him. Or used to, at least.”

“You do?” Sid said. “How? Surely not since he joined the police.”

Lyco breathed deeply. “It’s… complicated.”

“Is this why you never talk about your past?” Raskin asked. “Is this Shadow someone important?”

“Did you have a fling with him?” Sid put in.

“No!” Lyco said. “We… we did meet in the police. Because... I was in training to be an officer, like him.” 

Raskin stared at her in disbelief. Lyco, a member of the police? It couldn’t be. She was the most anti-police person he had ever known.

“But… you don’t just  _ leave  _ the police,” he said slowly. “You can’t. That’s part of the agreement you sign up to, isn’t it?”

“None of this matters right now!” Lyco snapped, her voice breaking. She put her paws to her head. “Look. Shadow knows me. He knows how I feel about the laws on fighting. Which means that, if the police get any kind of whiff of Fight Den’s existence, as a commander... he has all the power he needs to come after us.”


	10. Emergency Meeting

“There are... so many things I don’t understand right now,” Raskin began. “Why were you part of the police? How did you then _leave_? And why—”

“Pokémon will be arriving here in thirty minutes,” Lyco said through her teeth. “We will have to address them in ninety minutes. Now is _really_ not the time to be asking me personal questions.”

“But these are important things! If you won’t tell us anything, how do we know we can trust you?”

“Oh, do me a fucking _favour_ ,” Lyco spat, her head snapping up at him. “Has the last month just erased itself from your memory?” The venom in her tone made Raskin and Sid veer away from her on their stools. Lyco looked at them for a moment, then exhaled heavily. She leant towards them and lowered her voice. “Look. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But only after we’ve figured this shit out tonight. Okay?”

Raskin glanced at Sid, and they nodded in unison. “So… all that’s important right now is that this ‘Shadow’ might come after us, because he knows you,” Raskin said. “And what we do about that.”

“Correct,” Lyco said. She seemed to have recovered her poise. “The threat is two-fold. Firstly—and really, we should have planned for this already—there’s what to do if he sends a task force to investigate this area. I don’t know if any Fight Den rumours have escaped these walls already, but we wouldn’t know if they had.”

“Um, hold on,” Sid put in. “I thought we’d already done all the safety stuff around that. With the loud music playing upstairs to make it look like people are in, locking the doors…”

“We’ve done the bare minimum,” Lyco said bluntly. “What happened if, tonight, while we’re all in the basement, the police picked up evidence leading to this building and they broke down the doors to enter? Every single pokémon in the basement, including us, would be fucked. There’d be no way out.”

“But the police wouldn’t do that—” Sid began.

“With Shadow leading them, they could do _anything_.”

“Okay, so that’s one problem,” Raskin said. Lyco’s words sent shivers through his bones, but he hoped that if they kept talking, it would put him more at ease. “What do you propose we do about it?”

“I think…” Lyco looked to the ceiling, then buried her head in her arms for the second time of the night. “We obviously need some sort of emergency exit.”

“An alarm system, too,” Raskin said. “There’s no use having an exit if the police all arrive before we can use it.”

“But we need to make sure there _is_ an exit before thinking about that,” Sid said.

“Right,” Raskin said. He saw Steela in the corner of his vision. The raboot held a glass in her paw mid-polish, and was regarding the three of them, hunched as they were in a corner of the room, with an uneasy look.

“Steela, could you help us with something?” Raskin said, beckoning her. Steela paused, put down the glass carefully and walked over.

“In your basement,” Raskin said. “Is there any way out other than up the stairs?”

Steela hesitated, then shook her head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

The three partners exchanged looks.

“Just wondering,” Sid said innocently. “Thinking about more things we could do with the room.”

Steela nodded slowly. “Well, I can’t help you on that one.”

They waited until Steela had moved back to the bar, busy cleaning something again, before continuing.

“Well, now what?” Raskin said. “We can’t plan anything without an escape route.”

“Steela might be lying?” Sid said hopefully. “She didn’t answer straight away…”

Raskin frowned, unconvinced. Then, an idea hit him. “Lyco!” he said. “You’re a rock-type. You could check out the basement walls.”

Lyco gazed dimly at him. “What good would that do?”

“Well, there’s supposed to be loads of underground tunnels in the Harmony District—what if the basement was close enough that we’d be able to burrow into one? You’d be able to tell if there were any inconsistencies in the stone, wouldn’t you? With a room that big, we must be close to _something_.”

For a long moment, Lyco’s gaze remained vacantly distant. Then, as if the words had only just filtered through to her, she straightened up and nodded. “It’s worth a try,” she said quietly. “Come on, then. No use wasting time.”

* * *

Raskin couldn’t remember a more nervous wait since the morning of his exam results.

Lyco’s method was simple. She pressed her paws and head to the basement wall, starting with the back wall by the stairs, then sidestepped along it very slowly, feeling every crevice in the stone.

“If there is any inconsistency, I should be able to find it,” she had said. “I’ll just have to be thorough. These walls are thick.”

Thorough she most certainly was. Unfortunately, it meant that Raskin and Sid could do nothing but ruffle their fur impatiently while they watched the lycanroc search.

“Found anything?” Sid said hopefully after a while. Lyco had still only covered a fraction of the room.

“I’ll tell you if I do,” she growled. Then she paused. “What time is it?”

Raskin glanced at the watch on his foreleg and swore. It was almost eight o’clock already.

“People are going to start arriving any minute,” he said. “Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow?”

“No!” Lyco hissed. “This is too important to put off.”

Raskin looked bemusedly at her. Had Lyco gone mad? “Then… what are we supposed to do?” he said. “What do _you_ want us to do?”

“Just… keep people upstairs for now. I’ll finish as fast as I can.”

“Should we tell them what’s going on?”

“Absolutely not! Just… I don’t know, just bullshit something!”

Raskin huffed. At least he had Sid with him. If Sid told people to stay upstairs, they would.

The first thing he saw upon clearing the steep staircase to the pub was Steela’s stern face in front of them.

“What is going on with you three?” she demanded. “First you talk all secretively in a corner, and now you leave me alone upstairs when it’s almost eight? You guys are in charge of this, remember!”

Raskin breathed deeply. Now was _really_ not the time for Steela to wade into things. “It’s all good now,” he said. “Sorry to worry you.”

“Lyco’s still down there,” Steela pointed out.

“She’s just sorting a few things for tonight,” Raskin said, hoping their continued vagueness would stop Steela from pressing.

The raboot frowned, and opened her mouth to respond—but as she did, the front doors swung open. A group of six pokémon walked in, Luis among them. He raised a hand to Raskin in greeting.

Steela scowled at Raskin before turning and strolling back to the bar. Nothing could override her bar duty. “Evening folks!” she said to the arrivals, any animosity completely discarded. “Can I get you any drinks to start the night?”

Raskin tried at first to keep casual conversation with arriving pokémon, while steering them away from talk of heading downstairs. Sid was much better at this however, so he decided to leave the quilava to it and stand by the front door instead, making sure to check everyone who arrived.

Fortunately, no one seemed keen to head downstairs while the bar was still filling up. But despite Raskin’s continual glances at his watch, time kept moving, and it soon reached half-past eight, 30 minutes until Fight Den was supposed to begin.

* * *

“Oh—you can’t go down just yet,” Sid said, hurrying over to a litten and glameow who were about to set paw on the stairs. “Lyco’s busy setting things up. She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

The litten frowned. Sid recognised them as friends of Luis, and he hoped the mutual connection would keep the ‘mon from getting uncivil. “What’s there to set up?” the litten asked. “We’ve never been asked to wait before.”

“All very secret, I’m afraid,” Sid said, giving them a reassuring grin. “But you won’t be kept in suspense for much longer!”

The two quadrupeds glanced at each other, then trudged back into the bar. Sid sighed, wiping his brow. Danger averted.

When he looked around the room though, the tightness in his chest returned. The floor was becoming dangerously crowded already. Plenty of ‘mon would usually be downstairs by now.

 _C’mon Lyco,_ Sid thought. _Either find something or don’t; we can’t just keep everyone here!_

Even worse, he saw the litten muttering to other pokémon on the floor, nods and looks coming in Sid’s direction. That pair weren’t the first pokémon Sid had pushed away already—news was probably spreading all around the room now. Why couldn’t they just be patient? He was as desperate to start fighting as anyone, but—

A paw tapped on his shoulder from behind, making him jump. Lyco narrowed her eyes at him.

“I think I’ve found something,” she said. “Where the fuck’s Raskin?”

“At the door,” Sid said.

Lyco opened her mouth to protest, then stopped. “And we can’t just leave that unmanned,” she muttered. “Okay, hold on.”

She stepped into the main room, cupped her paws to her mouth and roared, “OI!”

Even through the booming music from the radio, she immediately had every pokémon’s attention.

“Sid and I will be going downstairs,” she said. “ _No one_ is permitted to follow until we say so. Raskin!” The nickit’s eyes shot open at her glare. “Keep an eye on things.” Then she gave Sid a nudge. “Come on.”

Sid gave Raskin the most sympathetic look he could before disappearing. How was Rasky supposed to stay at the door, while keeping a packed room of impatient ‘mon under control? Sid just hoped that they respected Lyco enough not to question the bizarre order.

Then, he suddenly realised—Lyco said she had _found_ something!

“What did you find?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet, so don’t get too excited,” the lycanroc grunted. “There’s a piece of the wall that feels much shallower than the rest. I think something’s behind it.”

“What—we’ll need to knock it down?”

Lyco gave him a withering look. “Did you expect a secret rock, that we push into a magic mechanism to move one of the walls aside?”

Sid folded his arms sullenly. That was _exactly_ what he had hoped for, but he wouldn’t give Lyco the satisfaction of knowing.

Lyco took them to the very end of the room, just behind one of the crates. She placed her paws down a few times before stopping in one spot, a couple of feet from the ground. “It’s here.”

Sid nodded, uncertain. He couldn’t see anything amiss. “What’s the best way to break into it?”

Lyco answered a moment later, taking a few steps back before suddenly hurling herself at the wall. Sid gave an involuntary yelp—not least because the wall remained as solid as it looked, and Lyco’s effort was only met with a dull _thud_. She collapsed to the floor with a groan.

“I thought that would’ve done it,” she said, shaking her head. “Right, your turn.”

“What?!”

“Oh, come on Sid,” Lyco said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been watching you fight. You love throwing yourself at things.”

“I haven’t battled a wall-type before,” Sid retorted. Still, he knew it would be selfish not to follow Lyco’s lead. He moved to where Lyco had stood, and she helpfully pointed out the strip of wall he should aim for. He took a breath, imagining that he could already see the hidden treasures that lay behind the flimsy wall. Then, he lunged towards it.

The wall moved.

He didn’t push through it—the wall still stopped him in his tracks, with all the brutal density of a, well, _wall_ —but something had weakened. He stood up and immediately winced. _Mew_ did his shoulder ache! He might have to go easy on fighting later.

His feeling was correct. A couple of tiny holes in the wall had appeared, and around them there was a shallow indent. He glanced at Lyco excitedly.

“Good job,” she said, genuinely for once. “Now, I should be able to finish this…”

She walked up to the stone, held her arms in front of her and closed her eyes, shoulders swaying slightly. Then, she lunged forwards with a sudden yell. Rather than her body being stopped by the stone like before—like it should have been—the stone moved with her like a wave.

Rocks tumbled with a deafening crash. Sid couldn’t get a glance at what lay behind the mess before a mountain of grey smoke consumed them. He broke into a fit of coughs, glancing helplessly at Lyco. She just stood in front of the smoke, breathing heavily but apparently fine.

The clouds finally cleared. Where the piece of wall had once been was now a circular hole, big enough for a pokémon but little more than that. It stretched only a short distance before opening out into a… much bigger room, it seemed. He couldn’t tell from where they stood.

Sid gazed through the hole, scarcely able to believe his eyes. “What is this?” he said. “Some kind of underground base…? Lyco—”

He turned to her again, but Lyco was looking behind them. Only then did Sid hear the pounding of pawsteps, ‘mon practically falling over each other down the basement steps. And at the very front of the frenzy, her eyes blazing with fury, was Steela.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” she screamed at them. “When did I give you permission to tear down my building?!”

Sid shivered. He had never seen Steela so much as raise her voice in anger. This was bad.

“Why didn’t we just tell her what was going on?” he muttered to Lyco.

“Everything makes sense in hindsight,” Lyco snapped. But she seemed as lost for ideas as he did as Steela advanced on them.

“Steela, wait! We have some… important news that we need to tell everyone!”

Raskin’s voice. It came from the other end of the room, and sure enough there was the nickit at the bottom of the stairs, his face flustered. Sid imagined the flood of pokémon that must have run past him down the stairs as they heard the wall collapse. _Sorry, Rasky…_

Raskin hurried through the crowd towards Sid and Lyco. “Fight Den may be in more danger than before,” he continued, turning to face the group. “We need to tighten up our security and plans for if anything goes wrong. One part of that is finding an emergency exit from this room. And so, this…” He trailed off, looking at the hole in the wall with bemusement. He glanced at Sid and Lyco. “Uh, what is this?”

“We were just about to find out,” Lyco said. She glanced at Steela. “Do you know anything about this passage?”

Steela seemed frozen in time. “What… do you mean, Fight Den is in danger?” she said. “Are you saying that we’re in danger, too?”

Lyco scoffed. “We’ve always been in danger.”

“But we might be in more than we initially prepared for,” Raskin finished.

Steela nodded slowly. Then she snarled. “Of course I don’t know about this hole,” she said. “My family have owned this pub for generations, and no one’s ever mentioned it.”

Sid looked between Lyco, Raskin and Steela’s confused, anguished expressions. Mew, he hated situations like this. He was never any good with subtle words of wisdom. If only there was a way out of it…

He glanced behind them at the passage, and his eyes lit up.

“Say,” he said, giving Lyco a nudge. “Might be worth checking what’s inside this thing. Whether it’ll be any use to us after all.”

“Good idea,” Lyco said with barely a second’s hesitation.

Sid didn’t need to think twice. He got onto all-fours and began crawling through the hole—it wasn’t quite tall enough for him to stand up.

“Be careful, Sid,” he heard Raskin call after him.

“Oh, I will,” Sid said coolly. “I—”

The tunnel suddenly ended, which is what he had expected, seeing it ahead of him. What he hadn’t expected was for the floor to end too.

He let out a startled yelp, which was cut short the moment he hit the ground again. It was wet, covering most of his legs. And… thick.

He heard a flurry of limbs from above, then Raskin’s head peered over the side of what must have been the tunnel he had fallen down. The room was almost pitch-black—Sid could only tell who it was from the nickit’s distinctive silhouette. Once Raskin saw that Sid had only fallen a couple of metres, he visibly relaxed. “Why didn’t you look where you were going, you stupid slowpoke?” he said.

Sid smiled, but it disappeared the moment he moved to stand up. The muddy water practically stuck to him. Confused, he gave it a sniff.

Never had Sid ever wanted to undo a sensation so badly.

“Oh my god,” he said, reflexively spitting and sputtering like he’d just inhaled something poisonous. Oh god, the smell. His muzzle had never encountered something of this potency before. He could feel his eyes watering.

“Sid? What happened?” Raskin said. Then he heard a gagging sound—the poor nickit must have sniffed it too.

 _So much for this being some secret, underground hideout,_ Sid thought, stumbling his way to a wall to lean against. _We only dug into a stupid sewer._

He looked up at the tunnel above him, well over twice his height. _I ain’t getting back up there, either._

“Can you see anything ahead of you, Sid?” Raskin called overhead. “Any lights, perhaps?

Sid squinted, turning in all directions. Yes, there was something bright back the way he’d come, next to a wall underneath the tunnel. It wasn’t a long walk away, but the darkness and strong desire not to slip into the goop that covered his feet was enough for him to take it very slow. If only he had an easier way to see...

Eventually though, he could peer up at the fragmented light of a streetlamp. He never thought he would find the sight of one so welcoming.

“Looks like a manhole,” he reported, once he’d made his way back to where he’d fallen.

He heard Raskin let out a sigh of relief, then Lyco’s head appeared in the tunnel. “Right, Sid. I suggest you climb up out of there, figure out where you are, then run home and have a long shower. Forget about us for now.”

Sid grinned, safe in the knowledge that Lyco couldn’t see him. He had gotten out of the negotiating stuff, even if it wasn’t quite the route he had envisioned.

* * *

It quickly became clear to Raskin that Fight Den would not be happening today.

The mess that Sid had created wasn’t all his fault, but his antics in the sewer held everyone up for a good half hour. It might have been entertaining for the quilava, but no one on Raskin’s side of the room other than the nickit could even see him.

When a few pokémon started trudging towards the basement stairs, Lyco stopped them in their tracks. “We have the future of Fight Den to discuss, and no one is going anywhere until we figure it out,” she said sternly. “Unless, of course, you don’t give a shit about future Fight Dens.”

Then there was Steela. In all the time Raskin and Lyco spent faffing around with Sid, she had just stood behind them, stewing silently. When at last Sid looked to be on his way, and Raskin and Lyco turned back to the raboot, ready to resume their discussion, she wasted no time.

“I don’t see why I should ever let you in here again,” she said. “First, you tell me we’re all in danger of getting busted—”

“That’s not what we said,” Lyco interjected.

“Then you break down a piece of my _wall_ —”

“Why do you care so much about that? We’ve put this basement to more use than you ever would have.”

“Then why do _you_ pay me for it?”

“Good question. You should be paying us, the amount of trade we’ve given your struggling—” 

“GUYS!” Raskin cried, darting between the two sides, standing on two legs so he could actually be _between_ them. “No more petty arguing! Steela,” he turned to the fuming raboot, “we’re… sorry for doing this to your wall. We should have been clearer about everything. It won’t happen again.”

 _Of course it won’t happen again, idiot,_ he cursed. Steela sniffed, seemingly unconvinced, but at least she didn’t shout at him.

“This basement is, for the time being, still the best location we have for Fight Den,” Raskin went on. “We would really like to continue using it. Is there anything we can do that would make you change your mind about that?”

Steela scowled. “Convince me that you know how to keep us safe,” she said, then she wrinkled her nose. “And Mew, get that bloody hole boarded up. It’ll stink out the whole building if it’s left like this.”

Raskin nodded. That seemed conceivable enough. “Is it alright if we can discuss those things before coming back to you?”

“Do whatever you want with your…” Steela gestured vaguely for the right word. “…society here. I’ll be upstairs. I’ve got cleaning to do.”

She turned on her heel and stomped away. The gathered pokémon gave her a very wide berth to the basement stairs.

The door slammed shut, and a moment later, the sound of the blaring radio upstairs dimmed significantly. Raskin didn’t have it in him to protest to Steela about why the radio was on in the first place. Neither did Lyco, apparently.

He found himself facing fifty-odd sets of eyes, showing emotions from amusement, boredom, anxiety, to even hostility. All were clearly waiting for him and Lyco to do something.

Instinctively, Raskin moved towards the crates by the wall beside them. It would feel a lot better if half the room wasn’t looking down at him. Lyco followed his lead and sat on the crate next to the one he stood on.

“Sorry to keep you all waiting here,” he found himself saying. “I know this isn’t how you wanted tonight to play out.”

“You got that right,” a raticate from near the front of the room heckled. “Are we gonna fight now, or what?”

“No,” Lyco said strongly. Her voice seemed just about calm again. “You heard what Steela said. Things will have to change here if we are to stay. Whatever changes those are, you will need to know about them, and we may well need people’s help to work them out.”

“Uh, if I may.” A timburr raised his arm. Raskin frowned; he recognised the ‘mon from somewhere. “Is it _essential_ that we stay here, rather than move somewhere else?”

Raskin’s eyes lit up. _Moving? That could solve numerous problems._ But quickly, the rational side of him raised concerns.

“It’s hard to say,” he said. “We got very lucky with this location. The basement is ideal for doing things in secret, and there’s much more space here than in most houses. Plus, it looks like we have an escape route, too.”

“Not enough space, though!” Aeris said, stepping forwards. “Like I told you, this place is already getting overrun with people during fighting hours.”

“And a sewer isn’t the kind of escape route I want to be part of,” a minccino added, whose fur was practically sparkling.

 _Yeah, no shit,_ Raskin thought. “Well, do you guys know of anywhere better?” he asked. Aeris scowled, but did not answer. Raskin looked to the whole room. “In fact, does _anyone_ know of a location that can offer more than this?”

A low murmuring broke out in the room. Raskin glanced at Lyco as if to ask, _Was that the right idea?_ She nodded in what he guessed was approval. Hopefully.

The room slowly quietened again. No one seemed brave enough to step forward. Raskin sighed. The timburr’s solution _had_ seemed too good to be true.

He examined the timburr again. Then it came to him.

“Wait!” he exclaimed. “Timburr. Are you a builder?”

The timburr gave him a guarded look. “What makes you say that?”

He wasn’t very good at hiding the truth. Raskin had to hide a smile of relief. “I thought I’d seen you somewhere recently, that’s all.”

It was half-true—Raskin had certainly seen _a_ timburr working recently, but had no idea if it was the same one. The truth was, he seldom saw timburr in any other profession.

The timburr shifted his feet. “Yes, I am.”

A machop to the timburr’s side gave the ‘mon a nudge. Raskin definitely recognised him. “We’ve been working on some apartments just over the road from here, but it’s all finished now. Is there something you need us for?”

Raskin’s eyes lit up. This was _perfect._ “Well, if you two are builders, maybe you could build us a new location?”

The timburr raised an eyebrow. “That’ll set you back quite a bit of money. And we’ll need a place to build it, of course.”

“We can afford it,” Raskin said at once. _Or we’ll pay it back eventually._ “And I’m sure we’ll be able to find somewhere, right?” He glanced at Lyco hopefully.

“I think so,” she said.

“Then… yeah, I don’t see why not,” the timburr said. “We’re pretty flexible. Just tell us what you want and we’ll see to it that it’s made. As long as I can be assured that we’ll be safe.”

“Of course, of course,” Raskin said. His mind was buzzing with excitement. Building a new Fight Den had never occurred to him before, but now it seemed like such an obvious solution to all their worries. A purpose-built location could have everything that _everyone_ wanted: more space, more exits, greater protection from police. Plus, moving locations would throw any investigative trails right off.

“How long does a building project take you?” Lyco asked, taking Raskin out of his joyful daydreams.

“Depends, obviously,” the timburr said. “But at least a few weeks, depending on what you’re asking for.”

_Ah. Leave it to Lyco to ask the practical questions._

Raskin turned to her, speaking quietly so they wouldn’t be overheard. “A few weeks isn’t terrible. We could always postpone Fight Den until a new place is finished.”

“No!” Lyco hissed. Raskin almost recoiled at the venom in her whisper. “We can’t postpone.”

“Why not? We’ve saved up a good amount of money.”

“Leave things a few weeks and half these pokémon will have forgotten we were ever here. We’re still growing. That could all be lost if we suddenly stop now.”

“But—”

“Also, what do you think I punched a hole in this wall for? Decoration? We need to make things work _here_ , for as long as we have it.”

Raskin sighed. He knew she had a point, even if she made it a bit extreme. They had a good flow of business right now. And he didn’t fancy living off whatever meagre savings they’d have left from all this.

“What do you suggest, then?” he asked.

“We can still get this new building in motion. But while that’s happening, we stay here and make the best Fight Den we can.

Raskin nodded. That seemed like the best solution to him too. The only asterisk was working out _how_ to make the best Fight Den.

If the volume of murmuring was anything to go by, the crowd in front of him were getting annoyed by his and Lyco’s whispers. Raskin turned back to them, eager to keep the ‘mon onside. _They wouldn’t be so impatient if Sid was here_ , he thought with a sigh.

“Aeris has said that she feels Fight Dens are getting too crowded. Do others agree with that?”

Immediately the room broke into uproar. _Oh, crap, bad question,_ Raskin thought. He put two digits of a paw in his mouth and whistled—finally, he could put that useless skill to work. The room quickly quietened.

“Raise a limb if you think it is _not_ too crowded.”

One or two arms raised uncertainly.

“Raise a limb if you think it is.”

Nearly the whole room raised their arms. Raskin gulped. Everyone aside from Aeris must have been too nice to complain to them.

“Also,” a voice called out, “having fewer numbers in here will make it easier for us to hide from police, won’t it?”

That was a good point. Maybe just as important as keeping these fighters happy. Raskin chewed his mouth and turned to Lyco. “Surely reducing capacity is the opposite of achieving growth.”

“No shit, detective pikachu,” Lyco said. “Still, it’s much better than nothing. But we’d probably have to start a waiting list for people to sign up to, or some other kind of administration. Mew knows how that could be organised efficiently, especially in secret.”

Raskin nodded, frowning. They needed to cut down capacity, but they also didn’t want to restrict interest in Fight Den. The two were impossible to marry, weren’t they?

“What if we… just opened Fight Den for longer?” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could think.

Lyco entertained it for a moment, but then shook her head. “We already have Steela at her limit. She’d never allow it.”

“And…” Raskin sighed. “We’d need to pay her more for the time, and coupled with the reduced money we’d make from lower attendances…”

He rubbed his paws into his face. Operating in the basement of a pub was both a blessing and a curse. If only there was a way to run Fight Den while keeping the pub’s upstairs open for Steela’s regular business. If the bangs and crashes could be kept quiet, somehow…

“Are you two just going to gossip in private all evening?”

Raskin’s head shot up at the indignant tone. He and Lyco were losing this crowd more with every minute that passed.

The voice was Aeris’s. Raskin looked into the espurr’s piercing eyes, trying frantically to come up with an adequate response. “I think… that… we…”

_Wait. Aeris!_

He broke off. “Aeris,” he said. “The protection barrier you can create. Does it block out sound around it?”

Aeris looked at him, bewildered, but then nodded. “I think so.”

“And, how big can you make this barrier? Would it be able to fit around, say, the basement door?”

Aeris’s eyes widened, seemingly realising his intention. “Possibly. As long as it’s not disturbed, I can keep up a barrier for ages.”

“Right. Then we might have a solution. Aeris, if you make a barrier around the door frame, covering as much as possible, I’ll stand in the bar upstairs and see how much noise comes through. Everyone else…” He turned to the suddenly rapt crowd. “Make as much noise as possible. Like you’re watching the best fight you’ve seen in your lives.”

As Raskin was about to move, he caught Lyco’s gaze in the corner of his eye. She was smiling—not only that, but there was a hint of glee in it.

“What now?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She shook her head, as if in disbelief. “Just, _finally_ , a good idea.”


	11. Past and Future

By the end of the night, Raskin felt like he, Lyco and Sid deserved an award for managing everything they did.

Aeris' psychic barriers on the basement door worked a treat. Raskin could barely hear a thing when he was upstairs, even with the basement full of pokémon. Unfortunately, though there were a few other 'mon who could create a similar barrier to Aeris, none were as powerful. The espurr wasn't willing to offer her services for free, either, nor was she willing to work more than two nights a week.

So they compromised. On the two nights Aeris worked, up to thirty pokémon were allowed downstairs, making as much noise as they liked. On every other night, starting from six o'clock now rather than nine, the maximum capacity would be twenty, and pokémon had to stay quiet while fights were happening. This would make life easier for whoever was creating the barrier.

When they raised this idea to the basement, most seemed fine with it, to Raskin's surprise. He guessed that they came here for the fighting more than the atmosphere. The promise of a bigger and better Fight Den in just a few weeks probably helped, too.

With the new, much more frequent opening hours, Steela was concerned of there being unintended crossover between her regular customers and those there just for Fight Den. To solve the issue, they agreed to hire another 'mon to sit guard next to the basement steps, acting as if it led to a private, invite-only room. The guard would be given a list of trusted Fight Den 'members' to let inside, and anyone else would require the approval of Raskin, Sid or Lyco.

Finally, a helioptile helped them rig up a couple of alarms: one that could be activated from behind Steela's counter, and one within reach of the bouncer above the basement. They would bring drinks and cushions downstairs so that if anyone ignored the bouncer and came downstairs anyway, the alarms would give them enough time to stop fighting and look like nothing suspicious was happening. The sewer tunnel was also hidden behind a particularly thick, dense crate.

All of this meant that Sid's wall murals had to be painted over again too. The quilava accepted that it was necessary, even if he watched the paintings disappear like they were his children.

"I'll meet you tomorrow morning, then," Lyco said to Tyler. The nidoran was the last customer yet to leave the basement.

"Sure," Tyler said with a grin. "Think yous a' gonna like the place I got. Even if it's a bit rough on the edges."

Lyco watched him go, looking satisfied. "Right, fools, ready to clear up?" she said. "I don't think there'll be so much today, given we..."

She trailed off upon turning around. Raskin and Sid stood in the centre of the basement, the latter's arms folded and the former doing the sternest sitting pose he could.

Lyco squinted at them. "Can I help you?"

"You said earlier that you'd tell us what went on between you and this police officer," Raskin said. "I'm not letting you wriggle your way out of explaining things again. We have to know. _Now_."

Lyco visibly deflated. She looked exhausted, and no wonder—all night she had been barking orders and discussing security plans. Raskin felt a bit sorry for her. Just a bit, though.

"Alright, fine." Lyco sat down on the stairs. "Shadow. As I said, we know each other because we were both trainee police officers, assigned to the same unit. That's how the training system works—you have your unit, and they're the 'mon you train with, eat with, sleep with."

"That's um..." Sid exchanged an uncertain look with Raskin. "Okay, but before all of that. How did _you_ ever join the police? You hate them!"

"Well, people change," Lyco said with a shrug. "Back when I left school, all I wanted to do was be part of the police. You know how they pitch it to you: saying how strong all the training will make you; the amazing friendships you'll form; the chance of being honoured by the president... at the time that really appealed to me."

Raskin remembered the assemblies at school where his year was given that exact presentation. They had gazed at the gallade towering over them with wonder and longing. It was no surprise a number of his classmates had been interested in the police too after that day.

The main thing that put Raskin off was the requirement that, once you joined the force, you had to stay there until you retired. Sure, there were different roles within the police and numerous districts you could rotate in. But the lack of choice the career presented had terrified Raskin. Fortunately, the qualification exams were notoriously selective, so even if he'd wanted to join, he doubted that he would have made it.

"So, what's it really like?" Sid asked eagerly. "Being on the _inside_."

Lyco sighed. "Not what I had hoped for. The training they put us through was gruelling; every day my joints ached. I didn't get on with the rest of my unit like I'd hoped. Especially Shadow. He was awful—so arrogant, cruel and self-centred. But the worst thing was that I started questioning the very way the police was run. The fact that we were allowed to fight in our training. In fact, we had to, because that's what makes officers Shift faster, and makes them stronger than regular civilians. But why should fighting be illegal to everyone, except the people whose job it is to _make sure_ it's illegal? I didn't like it."

Raskin wasn't sure what to say. He had never thought about the dichotomy between the police and the rest of the city before, but it did seem strange.

"Was it in the police where you discovered your condition?" Sid asked suddenly.

For a moment, Lyco's eyes seemed to light up in surprise. But they quickly relaxed again. "That's right. One day I woke up incredibly breathless, even more sore than usual. I could hardly move. They took me to the medics and that's how I got diagnosed. It basically ended any hope I had of doing practical police work."

"Did you get kicked out?" Sid asked, sounding horrified.

Lyco shook her head. "They can't do that, unless you do something seriously bad. No, all they could offer me in practical terms was a role in a non-physical police department. Probably filing paperwork or something. They did give me some sort of honour for bravery as a sweetener, but I couldn't give less of a shit about that."

"So that's why you left," Sid said.

"Well, it certainly strengthened my resolve to."

"What happened when you left?" Raskin asked. "How did the police respond?"

"Well, they were furious with me, obviously. They threatened legal action. So in return, I threatened to spill the beans in court about my experiences in training—how I was bullied by my instructors and fellow trainees, and that's why I was desperate to get out. They didn't like that much. Eventually we settled on a deal. I would be left alone by the authorities, but if I ever went back to the police for help, they were free to bring up all my previous offenses again."

"Mew," Raskin muttered. "That's horrible."

"Well, you wondered why I hated them so much," Lyco said with a shrug. She got up wearily and started towards the long brooms in the corner of the room that they cleaned with.

"Hang on though," Raskin said. "This Shadow. Why is he so dangerous, again? Because he knows how you feel about fighting?"

"That's right," Lyco said, turning her head. "Not just that, though. He…"

She suddenly broke off into a volley of furious curses.

"W-what is it?" Raskin asked, bemused.

"I forgot!" Lyco said. "It's not _just_ that Shadow has one of the most senior military positions in Deepden. But him, personally. It's no wonder he climbed the ranks so fast—he's a zoroark!"

Raskin and Sid looked at her blankly.

"He can make illusions!"

Raskin still didn't understand. But Sid murmured, "I thought that was a myth…"

"They probably tell you that," Lyco said. "But it's very real. He can make himself look like anyone he knows the appearance of. Do I need to spell out how dangerous that is? Anyone, _anyone_ we know could be Shadow in disguise!"

Suddenly, the panic in her words did hit Raskin. "What are we supposed to do, then?" he spluttered.

Lyco shook her mane. "I know he can't keep up illusions while in a fight. Something to do with it not working with physical contact. But no one fights here until they're already _inside,_ so…"

The three of them pondered for a moment. Raskin scratched his ear; Sid rubbed his paws together.

"Why don't we just tackle everyone when they arrive?" Raskin asked.

Lyco shot him a look. "How is that going to work?"

"Uh… make it a kind of greeting?"

Sid brightened. "We could say it's a way of proving your commitment to the Den! _Don't wanna get tackled? Then Fight Den ain't for you._ "

Lyco frowned. "I'm not sure everyone will want to get tackled immediately. I know that espurr won't.

"Maybe not a tackle," Raskin agreed. "A mutual headbutt? That might go down better."

Lyco considered for a moment. "It would probably be effective," she admitted. "Even so, we'll have to be vigilant. Make sure—"

There came a sudden rumbling from upstairs, and Steela's angry eyes appeared in the hatch above them.

"Just because you're allowed to keep your fighting club down here doesn't mean you can have a sleepover too," she barked. "It's almost midnight already! Clean up and get _out_."

She slammed the hatch shut. Lyco gave them another tired look and moved towards the brooms. "We'll discuss this further tomorrow," she said.

Raskin had no reason to argue—the night had exhausted him. As he started sweeping fur, pieces of scales and other debris into the middle of the arena, though, he couldn't help dwelling on what Lyco had said. Why had she been so reluctant to tell them about her past before now? None of it seemed particularly bad in his eyes. It wasn't like she had murdered someone or burnt down the President's offices.

Perhaps she felt they wouldn't trust her if they had known she was formerly of the police. But Raskin had no doubt that whatever feelings she had had in the past were gone now. If she was undercover with the police, they would have been arrested long ago. She would also be an astounding actor.

He suddenly remembered something she had told him when they had first started training. She had learnt to fight from her parents, she said, who took her to Oldden to do it in secret. He had assumed that her parents had also taught Lyco the anti-police values she was bound so strongly to now.

But that didn't match up with her story, where she had initially been infatuated with the thought of police work. Could she have gone against her parents' wishes? It seemed unlikely.

"Lyco," he began, "I wondered—"

But the lycanroc had already left, leaving a hurriedly swept pile of dust behind for them.

* * *

Shadow took his usual seat at the far end of the meeting room table. He liked that it let him see all the other police commanders at once—he felt more in control of matters. There was also the fact that none of the commanders would want to sit next to him, but he didn't care about that.

The commanders met biweekly in this room to discuss supposedly important matters. It was usually a snooze-fest of new procedures or upcoming meetings, but this time Shadow had an agenda.

"It's been two weeks since the President briefed us," he began, immediately drawing looks from the 'mon around him. "Have any of you been able to uncover more about secret fighting organisations?"

The commanders exchanged looks, a few of them appearing to hide smiles. Shadow gritted his teeth. _Pompous brats._

"I certainly haven't," Nidoking said at last. "None of my increased patrols have come back with anything out of the ordinary."

"Okay," Shadow said. "What about those workplace accidents Flygon told us about? Has there been a further increase?"

"Nope," said Arcanine, performing a huge stretch against her padded chair. "They seem to have disappeared as quickly as they began. Either that, or no one's been reporting them."

"Well, have you checked up on it?" Shadow pressed.

"Tell me, Shadow," Nidoking said. "How's that lead of yours going? That lycanroc you met in… what was it, high school?"

A ripple of laughter spread through the table. Shadow clenched his fists underneath the table. "We met in police training. And she's proving difficult to pin down. Since she left the police, she seems to have wiped herself from every record we have."

"That, or she just never existed," Espeon muttered. "Perhaps you illusioned her in front of a mirror?"

"I would have thought he does that enough with Flygon," Nidoking added.

"Enough!" Shadow slammed his fist on the table, baring his teeth. _That_ made them jump, and their laughter cease. He hid a smile of satisfaction.

"Why are none of you taking this seriously? Flygon told us this news in the strictest confidentiality—she thought it was _that_ important. Think of what we could gain from uncovering the truth!"

The commanders exchanged looks again. "The problem, my dear," Espeon said, his eyes narrowing, "is that we have a feeling Flygon was getting all worked up over nothing. The evidence she gave us two weeks ago has dried up faster than a 'saur in the heat. No pokémon appearing out of breath in the streets. No workplace accidents. No unusual activity. What are we supposed to do about a case that doesn't exist?"

Shadow decided not to challenge them further. His frustration was partly down to his own investigations in the past fortnight. He had had just as little luck as the other commanders. He'd hoped this meeting would give them all something fresh to go on.

 _But is it any wonder we found nothing,_ he thought, as Nidoking started jabbering about something else unimportant, _given the orders Flygon gave us? 'Be cautious.' 'Don't let the public start asking questions.' Why don't we just go in hard and sort out these wannabe rebels properly?_

He did feel some grudging respect for the pokémon caught up in this, if Flygon's premonitions were true. It was bold, reckless even, opposing the police on a matter so hard-line as fighting.

He felt a kind of pity for them, too. Only police officers could fight; that was how it was, and how it had to be. Deepden would be chaos otherwise. These pokémon surely knew that. So why even try? Perhaps they were budding police officers who had failed the entrance exam, and just wanted to feel like they could still be who they wanted to.

He stewed on the little information he had. By the time the meeting had been adjourned, he had devised a new plan of action. Investigate those workplace accidents again. Question the pokémon involved—properly this time, not just to tick some regulatory boxes. Find answers, or failing that, at least some kind of _lead_.

 _But more than anything,_ he thought, stepping out into the hallway of the commanders' floor, _I need to press Sergio to find out where that stupid—_

"Commander Shadow?"

Shadow spun around. As if by magic, there was Sergio Ambipom, a wad of papers held in one of the computer scientist's tails.

"I think we've made a breakthrough, sir," Sergio said, smiling nervously. "We think your lycanroc has started living under a different name. That's why she had almost vanished from the records."

Shadow smiled. That made sense. "Do you have an address?"

"Yes, sir." Sergio nodded vigorously. "Perhaps if you come with me, we'll fill you in…"

* * *

Raskin stood tensed, watching Lyco intently. The lycanroc crouched low, a small quarry of rocks surrounding her.

A small crowd of pokémon watched them spar. It was quiet enough in the early evenings at the Entei for them to train here now, which made life easier.

Raskin detected a slight ripple in the rock circle, which told him what was about to happen. It was invisible to the untrained eye—and might still be invisible had Lyco not let him know the secret—but when he was in combat and focusing his Energy, it sharpened his senses ever so slightly.

He dove to the side as the rocks flew forwards. A couple punched his side, but there was no time to wince. As Lyco ran at him, he brought up a paw covered with a murky, fog-like darkness. He swung it at Lyco, the dark Energy slicing her chest, and she grunted in pain.

She brought her fist down and slammed it into his head, shoving him backwards. It was denser than a limb had any right to be—she must have used some of her own rock Energy. Raskin grunted, kicking his legs upwards as Lyco tried to jump on him. They tussled on the ground for a few moments, Raskin fighting to manoeuvre his head far enough away from her. When at last Lyco hesitated, Raskin opened his mouth, needing a moment to prepare, then bit down on her thigh.

This time Lyco let out a yelp. She shoved him away with significantly less force than her punch, though it was still firm.

"That's… that's enough," she said, panting. "We'll call it a draw."

She offered a paw to him, the accepted etiquette for ending a fight. He took it, and the pokémon around them gave a smattering of applause. Given they weren't allowed to make much noise even if they had wanted to, Raskin checked the 'mon's faces too. They looked pleased, and a few even impressed. It gave him a warm glow in his chest.

He and Lyco stepped out of the arena together—even at this hour, there was no shortage of pokémon wanting a fight—and sat down on their usual crate at the back. A couple of 'mon had expressed their displeasure at only Fight Den's organisers having something chair-like to sit on, despite the cushions dotted around the edges of the room. Lyco had just shrugged. Any more would take up space and be a possible hazard.

"Raskin," Lyco said to him, a formal tint to her voice. "I think our training might be finished. There's not much more I can do for you."

Raskin could hardly believe his ears. "R-really?" he said.

Lyco snorted. "Don't sound so surprised. I can hardly manage one spar with you before needing a rest. I was always going to be limited by my condition."

Raskin's smile faded. "Oh. But… you could still help me out, couldn't you? I feel like…" He fiddled with his paws, unsure what to say. "I've enjoyed our training. I feel like I've learned so much."

"I think you have," Lyco said. She considered for a moment. "I can tell you if you've majorly fucked something up. But from what I can see, you're an Energy specialist more than a physical attacker like me. And I don't know much about dark-type attacks—no more than you, anyway. The best thing you can do now is just keep fighting."

Raskin nodded. Even though he was back 'in' amongst the pokémon of Fight Den, he didn't take such an active role as Sid. Perhaps he should change that.

"Actually, there is _one_ other thing," Lyco said. "About your tail."

Raskin looked down at his tail, curled slightly around his leg. The black hairs at the end were longer than usual. "Huh. I forgot to shave it."

"So you _do_ shave it," Lyco said, disapproval dripping from her voice.

Raskin looked up at her, bemused. "Yes? What's wrong with that?"

"Stop doing it."

"…What? Why?"

Lyco threw her arms up in exasperation. "Do you want to be intimidating?"

"I guess… yes? Yes."

"Then don't wilfully shorten parts of yourself that are designed to be!" She looked down at the tail, narrowing her eyes. "It must grow pretty long, right, if you're shaving it just to keep it above your feet?"

"Yes, it does," Raskin said grumpily. "It gets covered in dust and is a ballache to clean."

"Nonsense," Lyco scoffed. "Just grow it out. Why does it exist at all if you keep cutting it off?"

Raskin wanted to argue further—Lyco just didn't _understand_ his troubles, with that speck of fluff on her back that she called a tail—but then he spotted Tyler at the bottom of the stairs, meeting his gaze. Tyler had agreed to take him and Sid to the building site of the 'new' Fight Den. It was two weeks into construction now, and Tyler was one of the only 'mon that knew where the place was—he had originally told them about it.

"I'll see you later," he said to Lyco, hurrying off to the nidoran before she could say, 'where do you think you're going?'

Tyler greeted him with a large grin. "Evenin', Wussky."

 _Wonderful,_ Raskin thought. _A new nickname._ "Remember that we're the ones paying you," he remarked. "Have you got cover for upstairs?"

"Ya, the shiny zangoose guy is on it," Tyler said. "You ready to go? Smoky's waiting."

"Let's do it."

They climbed the steps and knocked on the door of the hatch. Luis opened it up, smiled at them, then sat back on the single chair in the little hallway.

 _The 'shiny zangoose guy',_ Raskin thought in amusement. Despite Tyler working for them now and earning money, through the same job as Luis, he still liked to think of himself as the dirtiest, scruffiest 'mon in the room. At least his old scent was significantly more bearable since he had gotten access to clean water.

"We should be back in no longer than an hour," Raskin explained to Luis. "Thanks for helping us out."

Luis gave him a casual salute. "Anytime, brother."

Once they found Sid, who was fiddling impatiently at the nearest table to the door, Tyler led them out of the White Entei.

There was much to talk about, but these days they barely spoke a word if they weren't inside their apartment or the Entei. So Raskin and Sid walked behind Tyler in silence, following the nidoran through several tight alleyways and sparsely populated streets until he stopped suddenly.

"This is it," Tyler said, looking at the ground beneath his feet.

Raskin eyed it suspiciously. "A… hidden manhole cover?" he said. It looked like the ones he saw scattered throughout the city, only this plate seemed deliberately camouflaged, the same grey shade of concrete as the path surrounding. If it wasn't for the faint circular marks around the edges, he would have missed it for certain.

"Sure's what it looks like, huh?" Tyler said with a grin. "But here."

He had a quick look around them, then bent down and jammed one set of claws into the tiny gap around the plate. With a rusty squeak, the plate moved a few inches, just enough for their bodies to slip into. Tyler gestured for the two of them to go. "It ain't too deep," he reassured.

It was still deeper than what Raskin expected. He let out an involuntary 'yip' as he landed on a cold, hard surface.

He sniffed instinctively, then wrinkled his muzzle; it reminded him of the White Entei's hidden passage. Tyler had muttered something about this being part of a discontinued sewage plant. Raskin was glad it was only discontinued.

He scooted forwards so Sid could follow him down, then looked out ahead. It was pitch black.

 _Or… was it?_ Raskin squinted. There were definitely no lights in the distance. Yet something in his gut told him otherwise. Or… maybe…

Suddenly getting an idea, Raskin focused his Energy, imagining Lyco was standing opposite him in this tunnel, claws raised. The darkness dissolved into a sort of greyed out picture, like the ones that appeared in newspapers. It wasn't like seeing in daylight, but it was still… seeing.

A thump sounded behind him. Sid scrambled to his feet, rubbing the back of his head. Then his head and rear flame spots burst into life, almost blinding Raskin with the sudden light. He winced, looking away.

It was remarkable how quickly Sid's control of his flame spots had progressed. Before Fight Den, he had never been able to light them up intentionally—it only happened for a brief second when he was startled, or excited, or another sudden emotion. Now, he could turn them on and off like a lamp.

"That's better," Sid said breezily, looking around. His gaze froze on Raskin. "Whoa, dude! Your pupils have gotten huge! What's going on?"

Raskin assumed that something in his appearance would have changed. He found it faintly amusing that this new ability only worked in places where he couldn't look back at himself. "I think I can see in the dark now," he said.

"You… can?" Sid's face screwed up. "Since when?"

"I'm guessing it's related to the Energy I've been learning to channel. Maybe it's a dark-type thing?" Raskin paused, then nearly smacked his face with a paw. " _Dark_ -type. Of course we can see in the dark."

"Huh. Awesome," Sid said, as Tyler landed rather more respectably on four legs, while simultaneously managing to squeeze the slate shut above him. "Makes you wonder why we pay so much for lighting, eh? I can just do it myself, and you don't even need it at all."

Tyler seemed a little disgruntled that both of the 'mon he was guiding could see better than him. He ended up sticking as closely to Sid as possible without risking his front horn getting singed.

"How did you ever discover this place?" Raskin asked after a while. They had trudged down several long, narrow corridors. There was occasionally a turning where two tunnels met, but Tyler chose their path without hesitation. Otherwise, the route was featureless.

Tyler laughed harshly. "Accidently. Shopkeeper was chasin' me down the street one time. Can't remember why. I saw one o' these suspicious looking covers and thought, hey, I ain't gonna outrun this dude anyhow. Got lucky that it actually opened."

"And you just… stumbled around in the dark?" Raskin frowned.

"I can see a little bit," Tyler grumbled. "So yeah, I kept exploring. Not like I had anything better to be doing. Found tons of different manholes leading to different parts of the city. And they all led to this place."

The tunnel suddenly turned sharply downhill, then it opened out at the bottom. And there, Raskin could hardly believe his eyes.

It wasn't a room but a cavern. A huge one. Greater than he could have wished for in his wildest dreams. He could see at least three arenas fitting in here, as well as everything else they had talked about wistfully—lounge areas, training areas, medical areas. Sure, there were big chunks of metal littering the ground, and the smell was still undesirable, but once it had all been _cleaned_ , then… Raskin couldn't stop himself grinning.

Sid whistled. "Wow! Looks a lot better than two weeks ago. Smells a lot better, too."

Raskin turned to Tyler. "You told us about this location, didn't you?"

"Yeah." Tyler narrowed his eyes. "What, ya don't like it? Bit late for that, mate."

Raskin almost laughed. "Tyler, I love it! This will be perfect. And you say there are multiple tunnels to enter from?"

"Tha's right," the nidoran replied. He pointed behind them. "There's a crossroads a little way up where it all meets. Haven't explored most of the tunnels in a long time, though."

"That's okay," Raskin said. "Maybe we could create a map of access points. That should make it easily accessible."

They moved towards the side of the room. The timburr and machop builders, who were joined by a riolu and combusken, were busy filling in a long dip in the ground.

"Who are these guys?" Raskin asked Sid as they neared.

"Beck wasn't too happy with the amount of work that needed doing here," Sid explained, pointing to the timburr. "Said unless they had a couple more hands, there was no chance of it getting finished in four weeks."

Four weeks was Lyco's ambitious timeline. They had two to go.

As he saw more of the cavern, Raskin could see what Beck had meant. As well as the metal, the ground was sharply uneven in places and piled high with rubble at others.

He frowned at Sid. "Do we have the money to pay two extra sets of wages?"

"Sure, we'll find it," Sid said with a wave of a paw, then raised it to the builders. "Evenin' fellas! How's the work going?"

The timburr, Beck, wiped his brow and grimaced. "I've never done anything like this before. It's a challenge."

"But a worthy challenge, right?" Sid said.

"Oh, totally," the machop replied with a grin. "Fight Den is gonna be off the charts once it moves here. I can't wait."

Beck nodded, a little less eagerly. "We'll get it done," he said firmly.

Sid gave Raskin a look which said, _"See? There's nothing to worry about, Rasky."_

"Hey, Sid, do your flame trick for us?" the riolu said, in a high-pitched voice.

Sid smiled, scratching his chin. "I _suppose_ I could…"

Raskin frowned at him. "Flame trick?"

"Just something I've been working on," Sid said, with a mischievous smile. "I ain't used it in battle yet. Still figuring it out."

Sid walked a few metres away from their group, turned side-on to them, then lit his flame sacs as bright as they could go. He took a few steps before suddenly breaking into a sprint, flames dancing wildly on his back. Then, he began breathing fire out of his mouth, and almost in the same motion leaped forwards into a somersault. The multiple flames engulfed him entirely, moving so fast that he became a red-and-white blur.

Sid landed a moment later. For a moment there was a track of fire left in the air behind him, before it sizzled and vanished. He looked back at the group, his flame sacs still lit, wearing a smile that was wide even by his standards.

When he asked Raskin what he thought, at first the nickit could only gape at him.

"You're a marvel, Sid," Raskin said. "How do you learn this stuff?"

Sid shrugged. "Doesn't feel like learning. I just do what feels right."

Raskin shook his head in amazement. "Well then, just… keep being right, won't you?"

* * *

They had only been back at the Entei for a matter of minutes before a pokémon crashed clumsily down the basement stairs, throwing open the door. It was a growlithe—Raskin knew him as Finn, one of Luis's friends. The growlithe immediately looked to the back crates, where he and Lyco were sat, and scrambled through the throng of bodies around the arena, where a ralts and sneasel fought, until reaching the crates.

"The police came to my apartment," he said, breathless.

Raskin's ears shot up, and Lyco suddenly lurched forwards. "They did?" she hissed. "What did they want?"

"It was… about here!" Finn spluttered. "I think they wanted me because of what happened at work a few weeks ago, but that was such a minor thing and no one seemed to care at the time and it's not like they could ever _prove_ anything since no one actually saw—"

"Slow down, Finn," Raskin said, detecting a glare from Lyco even as he said it. He ignored her. "We'll listen to you. Firstly, what happened at work?"

The growlithe nodded, taking a few deep breaths. "A few days after you first opened up, I had an accident there. I had only just started practising breathing fire. Something made me jump, then a jet of it just came out, and… kinda set a load of boxes alight. Luckily there was an extinguisher close by so nothing was seriously damaged."

"That's what the police asked you about?"

Finn nodded. "It was so sudden. This officer, once he checked who I was, immediately started asking 'have you been engaging in any fights recently?' I told him no, of course, but then he asked if I knew of anyone who _was_ doing these fights, or any _place_ where they were happening, and… obviously I said no as well, but…!"

Raskin exchanged looks with Lyco. _This is bad,_ her eyes said.

"Did anything happen after that?" Raskin said.

Finn dragged his paws anxiously. "No… though the officer said they'll be monitoring me for a little while. I don't know exactly what that means, but—"

"Why would you come here, then?!" Lyco exploded. "How brain-dead are you!"

The room suddenly quietened. Even the ralts and sneasel in the arena stopped wrestling with each other to look at the crates. Lyco glared back at them. "What?" she snapped. "Carry on!"

The ralts and sneasel looked back at each other. They both hesitated a moment, then the sneasel lunged a paw forwards and the fight resumed.

Finn looked up at Lyco. The poor 'mon was practically quivering. "I thought you needed to know," he murmured.

"You were right," Raskin said, putting a reassuring paw on Finn's shoulder. He gave Lyco a glare, but her expression remained stony. "This information might be very important, Finn. Thanks for telling us. But for now, you should stay away from here. Maybe even go to other pubs. If the police track you and it leads them here, it could be game over for us. You understand that?"

Finn nodded obediently.

"Did you tell Steela about this?" Lyco said.

Finn shook his head. Raskin was relieved, but not surprised; they would already know about it if Steela did.

As the growlithe shuffled away, Raskin turned to Lyco, who was now looking irritably over the room. At least everyone had stopped looking at them.

"Why did you have to shout at him?" Raskin said.

Lyco blinked. "Excuse me?"

" _Finn_ , Lyco. The poor guy was petrified of you."

"Oh…" Lyco shrugged. "Like I said, it was foolish to come straight here."

Raskin bristled at her nonchalance. "That's not good enough," he insisted. "You're always doing things like this. Can't you ever be nice to people? Or at least a bit more understanding? What is there to lose?"

He fully expected Lyco to snap back at him in typical style. So, it was to his immense surprise that her face softened as she turned to him, and she sighed.

"I'm nervous, Raskin. Incredibly nervous. Everything we've worked for still feels like it's balancing on a knife edge. Politeness is not at the front of my mind."

Raskin smiled. She was right about that. "If it helps, I'm virtually always nervous," he said.

"Oh, I know that," Lyco said with a smirk. "I've been trying to knock it out of you for weeks already."

"Well then, maybe I should help with _your_ nervousness, too," he suggested.

Lyco looked dubiously at him. "If you have any ideas, I'm welcome to hearing them."

Raskin spotted a spearow perched on someone's shoulders in the crowd. It was Willow, a delivery 'mon at a nearby post office. She had volunteered to deliver letters for them directly, and even though she charged a small commission, it was well-worth it to avoid going through the government-owned postal service.

"We need to inform everyone about what happened to Finn," he said. "What should we tell them?"

"Well, we should assume that the police will be thorough," Lyco answered. "I don't know if there's been similar accidents to the one Finn mentioned, but if there _are_ others, those people will get questioned too."

Raskin nodded. "So just tell anyone involved in an accident to stay away from here? Even if they haven't been questioned yet?"

"Yeah." Lyco scratched her mane. " _However_ , if everyone just tells the officers that they have no idea about Fight Den, like Finn did, the police might get even more suspicious of them. Maybe we could create some false rumours."

"Direct the police somewhere else, you mean? Isn't that a bit risky?"

"Everything we do is risky," Lyco said. "It should buy us more time, at the very least. More time to get Fight Den 2.0 finished." She paused to glance at the arena, smiling thinly. "If we can reach that point… then things will _really_ get started."


	12. Heating Up

Shadow checked the address he had written down one more time, then tossed the slip into a gutter. He shook himself as rain poured relentlessly from the sky. It was unfortunate that clothes and accessories compromised his illusions. The only object he'd manage to master working into them was his waist bag.

He rounded a corner where a small lake of rainwater had pooled on the downslope of the road. The lack of streetlights almost made him step right into a pile of foul-smelling rubbish that had been left on the pavement. He screwed his face up in disgust. In an ideal world, he could use a few of his grunts for a menial mission like this. But this specific task, he knew, was one only he could perform. His officers seemed to be finding new techniques by the day to be utterly useless.

He found the correct apartment tower, climbed several flights of stairs, and finally reached the door he was looking for. He pulled out a small, foldable mirror from his bag, checking his appearance. Tonight, he would be an electabuzz.

There was no doorbell, so he knocked vigorously on the windowless door. After a moment, it opened just a crack, and a lycanroc peered from behind the latch. "Hello?" she said, bleary-eyed and fur ruffled.

"Good evening Madam," Shadow said, grinning triumphantly within his disguise. _Finally, I've found you._ "There's been reports of electricity outages on your block. Blown fuses and all sorts."

The lycanroc frowned. "I haven't had any problems."

"Regardless, I've been ordered to check your fuse box in case of a routing problem. Won't take a minute."

The 'mon's frown deepened. "Couldn't you have done this before curfew?"

"Been a busy day, madam," Shadow said cheerfully, wiping his brow for good measure. "Apologies for the inconvenience."

The lycanroc sighed, then finally unlocked the latch. "I'll show you where the box is."

Shadow stepped inside. He wiped his wet feet at the door instinctively, before realising there was no mat.

In fact, there wasn't much of anything. The apartment was even smaller than it looked from the outside. The door led straight into a living room, fitting only a coffee table and a small sofa, and a tiny kitchen was at the side of the room, almost as an afterthought. Even though there looked to be very little of value in the house, it was a mess: bins overflowed, and dust and cobwebs gathered in corners.

 _What a life,_ Shadow thought, shaking his head mentally. _You could have been one of us. You could have been great._

One thing he couldn't see amidst all the rubbish, however, were glass bottles. Shadow remembered how often the lycanroc had turned to whiskey in her later time at the academy. If he was banking on finding one thing inside this house—particularly given what a mess it was—it would be alcohol. _Curious._

"Here," the lycanroc said, opening a hatch in the wall next to the kitchen. Shadow closed the door behind him, and as the lycanroc still looked away, he let his illusion drop. He was excited to see her reaction. Both because it could give her away, and even if it didn't… he just wanted to see it.

The lycanroc turned. And yelped.

She scrambled backwards for a moment, then seemed to think better of it. She gripped the side of the wall next to her tightly, paws trembling. She looked up at him, though couldn't meet his eyes.

"Shadow," she gasped.

Shadow grinned widely back. "It's been a while, Alexia."

Alexia slowly managed to distance herself from the wall. She straightened up. "What… what are you doing here?" she demanded. "Haven't you got better things to do than break into my house in the dead of night?"

"Well…" Shadow spread his arms out. "As a matter of fact, I—or perhaps we—have been looking for you for some time. It's been very hard to track you down, what with this new identity you've created. What is it they call you? Lyco? Very… imaginative choice."

Alexia scowled at him, her arms folded.

"What do you get up to these days, anyway?" Shadow asked. He looked around the room deliberately. "I dare say it doesn't pay too well…"

"Why should you care about how much I earn?" Alexia spat.

Shadow chuckled. "Good point. I didn't spend this much time finding you just so we could have a catch up… fun as that may be. No, I'm inclined to believe you've been up to some illegal business, Alexia. And as a police commander, I don't take too kindly to that."

He watched the lycanroc's eyes for a reaction, but there was little. It was hard to see when she still didn't meet his gaze. _She still fears me,_ Shadow thought, feeling a satisfied glow. _Pathetic._

"What kind of business?" she said.

"Fighting," Shadow said, spitting the word like it was a mouthful of sand. " _Illegal_ fighting. Someone in this city is determined to run their own little enterprise, right under the police's muzzles."

"Really?" Alexia said idly. "Who would do that?"

"Interesting you should ask." Shadow narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm not here to mess you around, Alexia. I know you're involved in this. This… _club_ is the kind of thing you always wanted. I should just arrest you right now."

Alexia shook her head at him. "You're making blind assumptions based on no evidence. You're a commander now, right? I don't think it would please the President to know one of her most trusted men was wasting his time past curfew, in a dingy apartment, arresting someone for no reason—all while pretending to be an _electrician_ —"

"How I conduct my business is none of Flygon's concern," Shadow snapped. "Besides, my skills are unrivalled by anyone in this city."

"Oh, really?" Alexia said. "What good has that done for you?"

Shadow squinted at her. "I'm the youngest commander in police history."

"And does that make you happy?" she went on. "Or do you still resent everyone around you for not being as good as you are? Do they still resent _you_? It was always clear how lonely you were. Even though you tried hiding it by being this tough guy who trained relentlessly, and picked on anyone who wasn't—"

"ENOUGH!" Shadow bellowed. He looked madly for an item to break—a glass on the coffee table, that would do—and smashed it on the ground between them. Alexia leapt back, her paws starting to shake again.

"I hold all the power here, Alexia," Shadow snarled. "The _government_ holds the power. Whatever puny protest you think you can make with this fighting club, it means nothing. It doesn't matter how hard you try to keep it secret; I _will_ track it down. And when I do, my men will rip through you so _absolutely_ that no pokémon will ever dare question the fighting ban again."

Alexia stood a few paces back, eyes around Shadow's midriff.

"You can't even bear looking at me, can you?" Shadow said. "Maybe this will do the trick."

He drew his Dark energy into a sizzling ball and hurled it into Alexia. She screamed, the attack smashing her into the far apartment wall. She finally turned her eyes to his, wide and bloodshot, her mouth open, panting.

"Tell me what you know," Shadow said, "and no one will get hurt. We'll disband your little posse and nothing more will come of it."

Alexia said nothing, jaw fixed resolutely. Shadow strode forward and picked her up by the back of her mane. He pressed his head against hers, pitiful and wincing. "But if you want to play this game, Alexia, then boy, I am ready to play. I think about our last fight a lot, you know. You still have that syndrome, don't you? Energy Fatigue?"

Once again, Alexia didn't answer.

Shadow took that as a yes. He growled. "A pity. I should have left you in a wheelchair."

Suddenly there were movements outside. Someone banged on the door. Shadow heard a muffled, "Are you okay in there?"

He swore, spitting at Alexia's feet. _Idiot! I haven't learnt a damned thing from her yet!_

No… that wasn't true. Alexia's reaction to seeing him was _too_ shocked, too terrified—he must have been on her mind already. Which was proof, if Shadow needed any, that she _was_ mixed up in the fighting business.

What else? The lack of alcohol. She evidently still drank somewhere. Maybe at wherever this fighting club took place? He remembered seeing at least one pub in the list of possible locations they'd drawn up...

The door banged a second time. _I can figure this out later._

Since leaving through the door would be awkward, he moved to the window just above the wall Alexia had hit. He swung it open and made his fur the colour of dusk, just in case anyone was watching.

"I'm sure we'll meet again soon," he said.

Just as he leapt off, he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. When he made the ten-foot landing, the impact made him wince. He activated his night vision and glanced at his foot. Three short gashes had been made in the side. They bled a little, but would heal quickly.

 _So you do have a little fight in you_ , Shadow thought, smiling. _Still, it means nothing. You won't defy me again, Alexia. I_ will _succeed. And when I do, I'll be one step closer to Flygon's side._

* * *

Raskin shivered as he and Sid walked through the dark backstreets towards the White Entei. A chill had seeped into the air lately. Even though Raskin didn't like the way his new thick, overgrown tail dragged over the ground, it did keep the cold off his back.

The pub was quiet when they entered—as usual, for Fight Den was yet to open. Steela stopped polishing her glass and looked to them at once, beckoning them over. Raskin did so, confused.

"Lyco is downstairs," Steela told them. "Has been since the morning."

"What?!" Raskin exclaimed in a half-whisper. "She has work, doesn't she?"

Steela threw her paws up. "That's what I thought. She came in through the sewer door. Won't tell me a thing about what's going on."

Raskin exchanged an uneasy glance with Sid. "We'll speak to her," he said.

"You'd better," Steela grumbled, going back to polishing her counter.

The basement lights were switched off as they entered. Flipping them revealed Lyco curled up on some cushions. If she had been sleeping, the sight of them roused her instantly.

"Oh, thank god you're here," she said hoarsely. "Did anything happen to you on the journey? Anything bad?"

"Uh… no," Raskin said. "What happened to _you_?"

"Shadow found me," Lyco said. "He knows where I live."

Raskin and Sid paused, exchanging looks. Sid scratched his head. "That means…?"

"He _suspects_ me, idiot!" Lyco snapped. "Now he knows where I am, there's a high chance he's got someone assigned to watch me right now."

"Then how did you get here?" Raskin asked. _And… why did it take him this long to find you, with all the police resources at his disposal?_ He sensed that wasn't the most pressing question to ask.

"I went out in the morning, when the streets were heaving. Kept doubling back and following the biggest crowds. Got in here through the sewer tunnels. I think if they'd tracked me successfully, they would have broken in here by now. No sense in hiding anywhere else, right?"

Raskin nodded slowly. "So you're safe in here," he said. "But… only here."

"Exactly," Lyco said. "Sid, do you know how close New Fight Den is to being finished?"

Sid blinked. "Uh, at least a week going by my last check."

"Well, go and see them again," Lyco snapped. "Ask if they can do it faster. We need to move there as quickly as possible. I can live down there instead—it'll be nicer than in here."

"But, Lyco!" Raskin exclaimed. "You're planning to just abandon your house? What about everything you own?"

Lyco snorted. "None of that matters. Here." She rummaged inside her battered rucksack—the only possession she still had, it seemed—and pulled out a heavy pouch, tossing it to Sid. "If those builders aren't having it, use this as a sweetener. It's half of my savings."

Sid looked at the bag between his paws, eyes wide with astonishment. "A-Are you sure?" he said.

"Yes!" Lyco said. "Now get on with it!"

* * *

Sid returned about an hour later. By now, Luis had arrived to guard the basement, a drowzee was on psychic barrier duty, and a handful of pokémon were crowded around the arena. Raskin and Lyco sat by the basement steps, in charge of exchanging the mutual headbutts that guarded them against Shadow.

Lyco had been reluctant to even open Fight Den tonight, but Raskin and Sid had talked her around. Even if Lyco herself was in hiding, there was no reason to believe that Fight Den was in any more danger than it had been the day before. Raskin was still a little nervous, though.

"What happened?" Lyco demanded, the moment Sid reappeared. The bag of her money was gone.

"Uh… do you want the good news or the bad news?" Sid asked.

"I want _all_ the goddamn news, you stupid—!"

"Mew, alright!" Sid yelped, waving his arms frantically. "Well. They can't get it ready for tomorrow. Even if they worked nonstop, Beck said it would be impossible. But they _can_ open it the day after. So that's what we agreed. I… hope that works?"

Lyco paused, then nodded slowly. "Two days. Okay. Let's make an announcement once more people arrive."

"We've told Steela and Luis on the door to be on particularly high alert," Raskin told Sid. "That should go for us, too."

Sid suddenly looked crestfallen. "Does that mean I can't fight tonight?"

"Well—no, but… just when you're _not_ , keep an eye out, okay?"

"Hey!" Lyco barked suddenly, at a 'mon entering the basement. "Come back! You don't get out of a headbutt!"

"I already headbutted Raskin!" It was Aster, the ivysaur. He looked confused, and slightly scared, by Lyco's outrage.

"I didn't see it," Lyco snapped. She jabbed a paw at Aster. "I'm not joking! Come here!"

"My head hurts!" Aster protested. "I'm not even here to fight, I just wanted to watch…"

"Lyco, it _is_ him," Raskin said, nudging her. "We butted just a few minutes ago."

"Oh?" Lyco turned on him. "How do I know _you're_ telling the truth?"

"Lyco, I have to headbutt everyone! I can't be lying!"

Lyco glared at him a moment longer, then back to Aster. Finally, she exhaled and took a step back. "Right. Sorry."

"Maybe you should sit down for a bit," Sid said. "You've had a pretty crazy day, right?"

He took her arm, and Raskin winced. But to his surprise, Lyco didn't flinch. Sid led her over to the back crates with barely a complaint.

"Er… sorry about that," Raskin said to Aster, who was regarding them all with looks of bemusement.

Aster nodded uncertainly. "Is… she okay?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean…uh… " Raskin put his paws to his head, taking a heavy breath. "Honestly? I'm afraid to ask that."

* * *

Shadow stood outside the building with Entei murals. The paint was starting to peel on a few of them, and even on the ones that weren't, the once-bright colours had merged into a sorry jumble of beige.

An ageing, shoddy pub. Of all the links to fighting organisations his team had investigated over the past week—and there were a _lot_ , since almost every 'mon they interviewed seemed to have different rumours—this looked like a relatively plausible one.

He was wearing a minccino form, one of the forms he fell back on often. No one would ever suspect a minccino. Its fur was a perfectly innocuous grey; it was small, but not too small; and those bright eyes of theirs could never hurt a fly. Or so people thought.

He walked inside the pub. It should have been approaching peak business time, yet several tables were empty. And it was quiet, too. Sure, there were a couple of noisy groups, but the other occupied tables seemed subdued. Tired, even.

 _Well, people might just be tired,_ he reasoned. _Maybe there's a lot of shitty jobs in this area._

He bought a magoberry juice and sat down on a stool at the counter, overlooking most of the room. The raboot serving at the bar regarded him carefully, but didn't make conversation. Even with a minccino's innocent fur, people might get suspicious if Shadow very overtly started looking around. Fortunately, he could blend in with his behaviour just as well as his skin.

"I couldn't help noticing the murals on your windows outside," he said to the raboot, who was washing glasses. "How long have they been there?"

The raboot scoffed. "As long as it's been called the White Entei, pal. Which goes beyond me and my parents, I'm pretty sure."

"Ah," Shadow said, glancing around the room again. "This is the family business?"

"Sure is," the raboot said, shooting him a smile. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

Just then, a nidoran came up to the bar beside Shadow. The zoroark blinked. He'd kept one eye on the door and had definitely not seen a nidoran enter. He could have sworn that there were no purple heads in the room when he'd come in, either.

"Evenin', Tyler," Steela said cordially. "What's it gonna be?"

"Another HounBrew, please," Tyler said, beaming back at her.

 _So he's a regular,_ Shadow noted, as Steela poured the beer. He looked at the nidoran's eyes. He looked suggestible. Maybe even stupid. And his fur was poorly washed. All the signs of a pokémon without much money. Perhaps an easy target.

It would have been much easier for Shadow to keep an eye on the pub from outside; there, he could blend into the shadows to the point where he was virtually invisible. But the horrible murals made it impossible to get a good view of the interior. So, he kept sipping at his juice, keeping Tyler close to his vision. He noticed the nidoran's gaze kept darting away, towards something in the corner of the pub. Shadow frowned, unable to see what he meant—then a pair of pokémon suddenly appeared from the corner. A small room was hidden there, he realised. He didn't recall seeing these two pokemon before, either.

As Steela's attention was fixed on a couple of fire-types at the bar, Shadow slipped away. He pondered how to approach the hidden corner, then stopped himself. It was hardly hidden at all. Maybe it _was_ just this easy to gain access to a criminal den Flygon was so worried over? He smirked to himself, not letting it show on the minccino.

Besides, even if this went wrong, he could always come back as someone else.

The corner opened out into a small room, with a wooden hatch in the centre and a zangoose sitting next to it, a clipboard in his paws.

He glanced up the approaching Shadow. "Sorry mate," he said. "Downstairs bar is invite only."

"Oh, I see," Shadow said politely. "And… how does one get invited?"

The zangoose frowned at him. "I'm… not at liberty to say," he said slowly. "The folks here value their privacy."

 _Sure they do,_ Shadow thought. _But a private bar in a shabby old pub like this? I don't think so._

Still, he couldn't be certain that there _was_ a fighting society in that room. It could easily have been a prostitution ring, or an extortion racket. It would be easy to just flash his police badge and demand access to the room, but he didn't know the level of this group's secrecy—they might have a quick cover up should he muscle his way in. Besides, that was the boring, easy route. He wanted to see what was _actually_ happening, when these pokémon had their guards down.

He nodded politely at the zangoose and left, then slipped out of the pub altogether. Finding a spot in the shadows of the street where no one was looking, he changed his disguise. Studies had proven that pokémon held an unconscious bias towards others of their type, and even more so towards their own species. Shadow had a good grasp of virtually all the species in Deepden, but he opted for nidorino above its lesser nidoran form—larger species were better at getting what they wanted.

He checked his appearance in his mirror, just to be sure. As well as the nidorino itself, he illusioned a bag onto its side, the way quadrupeds wore them. This way, if he pulled something from his real bag, he could make it appear to come from this one, rather than it suddenly appearing out of thin air.

Satisfied, he entered the White Entei again, bought another drink, this time a HounBrew like Tyler's, and headed to the nidoran's table.

The moment he put his glass on the table, Tyler's head shot up. They widened at first, as if in surprise, then narrowed. "Do I know ya?" he asked.

Shadow laughed. "Doubt it, mate. I'm new to the area. Just lookin' for some company."

"Uh… right," Tyler said, shifting uncertainly. He had another glance at the corner room, then moved to get up. "Well, sorry, I was actually just goin'—"

"Wait!" Shadow said. He withdrew a twenty poké note from his bag and laid it on the table, careful to make sure only Tyler could see it. "I actually was hoping to get downstairs here. You have access to the downstairs, don't you? I saw you leave that way."

Tyler stared at the note in astonishment. He looked back at Shadow, as if to ask, _Are you offering?_ Shadow nodded, smiling.

"Right, downstairs," Tyler said slowly. "I'm allowed down there, yeah."

"Well, I don't seem allowed," Shadow said. "I hoped you might know how to rectify that."

Tyler frowned. "'Cause ya don't know anyone," he said. "No connections."

"What if you said I was your brother, would that work? They trust you, don't they?"

Tyler thought for a moment. "It probably would, yeah. But… I'm not sure I should…"

"Look, I'm not here to cause any trouble," Shadow said quickly, seeing the nidoran's suspicions rising. "I just heard about what you do here, and want to experience it myself." He withdrew a wad of notes from his bag and held them out to Tyler. "I can pay whatever it takes. Name your price."

Tyler, it seemed, had never seen this much money in his life. "Uh… two hundred?" he squeaked.

Shadow snorted to himself. _Idiot._

"Sure thing," he said. He carefully peeled off the notes, rolled them up and put them in a front pocket of his bag. He gestured towards the corner room. "Shall we?"

Tyler started getting up, then frowned. "Pay half of it now," he said. "So I know you ain't swindlin'."

Shadow smiled, both inwardly and outwardly. _Maybe you're not so foolish._ "Sure," he agreed. He passed over five of the notes, and Tyler stuffed them hurriedly into his own satchel, as if the money would disappear if he wasn't fast enough.

They approached the zangoose in the small room again. He nodded to Tyler, but frowned at Shadow. "Who's this?" he said.

"My brother," Tyler said. "He hasn't been here before."

"I work six night shifts a week," Shadow added, shrugging helplessly. "Shit sucks."

The zangoose eyed him carefully. "I'm not to let anyone new in," he said. "Even friends or relatives."

 _This guy's got more sense to him,_ Shadow noted. _Offering money won't be enough._

"Is there any point in keeping me out when I'm already _here_?" he said. "I already know what's down there. And I can pay, if that's what you're worried about. I'm not gonna cause any disruption. Just want to check it out, y'know?"

The zangoose examined him for a long moment, perhaps weighing him up. Shadow put on his most innocent, polite face.

"Alright," the zangoose said grudgingly. "I'll have to examine your bags, then."

As Tyler happily passed his over, Shadow felt a rare spike of panic. The zangoose _couldn't_ examine his bag—it didn't exist. He could try and align the nidorino's body with his own in such a way that passing his illusioned bag and his real bag overlapped seamlessly—but even then, his ID was in his bag!

There _was_ a much simpler solution… if he could make it work.

"I'll just leave mine at the bar," he said to the zangoose, already half-turning away.

The zangoose looked puzzled. "Uh… sure," he said slowly.

Shadow walked off to where he knew Tyler and the zangoose couldn't see him. He checked around the room that he wasn't being watched, then made the bag's illusion disappear.

He returned to the corner, smiling innocently at the zangoose. Finally, the 'mon lifted up the hatch on the floor. It revealed a set of stairs leading down. Bafflingly, a drowzee stood at the top of them, and he stared right up at them, saying nothing.

The zangoose waved an impatient paw at Shadow and Tyler. "Go on," he said. "Now!"

At the same time, as he spoke, Shadow suddenly heard noises coming from below. It wasn't anything riotous—he could only pick up snippets of conversation and the pattering of limbs—but it had appeared out of nowhere.

Confused, he did as the zangoose said, hopping down with Tyler onto the stair just below the drowzee. Then the psychic-mon tensed, and a pale, translucent screen appeared between him and the open hatch. When the hatch closed, it didn't make a sound.

 _They're using protect barriers to block out noise_ , Shadow thought, hiding a smirk. _Not bad, civvies. But if they're so keen to block out noise, that must mean..._

He followed Tyler down the stairs. He only had the smallest glimpse at what lay inside the room beyond, before a quilava stood in front of them. His back flames were fully ignited, but the quilava didn't seem at all riled up. Shadow had never seen a civvy fire-type have that kind of control.

Without speaking a word to either of them, the quilava turned to Tyler, and the two of them crouched opposite each other. They lunged forwards simultaneously, butting heads.

 _What?_ Shadow thought, baffled. Before he could think any more, the quilava turned his way. "You have to do that too," he said helpfully.

"A headbutt?" Shadow said.

"That's right!" the quilava beamed. "Gotta make sure everyone's in the spirit of things. So, come on!"

If there was any doubt left in Shadow's mind, this eliminated it. He was in the right place. _But I can't headbutt,_ he thought, mind racing. _Not without my illusion slipping. I don't understand—what kind of freaks would demand—_

Just then, he spotted a shape right at the back of the room, sitting on a strange, tall box. That overgrown mane and dusty fur was unmistakable—particularly as he'd been up close to it the previous night. _Alexia. Alexia! She knew I'd come here, the bastard._

"Um… hold on a moment," Shadow said. He turned his head away for a second, and while the quilava couldn't see his face, he made the horn on his disguise's head just a little longer and sharper. He didn't have time to check if it was convincing.

After what seemed like an eternity, he swivelled back to the quilava. "Oh, sorry," he said. "Thought I heard something behind me."

"Right…" the quilava said, raising an eyebrow. "So, the headbutt?"

"Ah! Well, my horn here might be a hazard." Shadow pointed to it. "Wouldn't want you to get hurt."

The quilava frowned, evidently noticing the horn for the first time. "I see…"

"How about I headbutt you?" Shadow suggested. "I'll go with the side of my head instead of the front. That way you shouldn't get hurt."

He knew his logic was tenuous at best. It wasn't as if the quilava had headbutted Tyler—they had headbutted each other. There was no reason why the quilava couldn't lead the headbutt anyway and merely target Shadow's side.

But, miraculously, the quilava didn't bring up either of these points. He nodded. "Okay, sure! Go ahead."

 _They don't know_ , Shadow thought, hiding a maniacal grin. _Alexia must have told them that I lose my disguise when someone hits me… but the same isn't true if I hit_ them. _Foolish, foolish civvies._

The quilava kept his eyes on Shadow for the entire duration of the headbutt. The possibility that this nidorino could have been disguised didn't seem to have even entered his mind, however. The moment they broke away, he asked, "So, you're Tyler's brother?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah," Shadow said.

"So uh, what gives? You seem a bit more… well-mannered than him, y'know?"

Shadow smirked. "He had a rough upbringing. Best not to bring it up when he's around. It was a difficult time."

"Oh, okay." The quilava turned away from him and looked to the centre of the room. Shadow did the same, finally getting a bearing of the place.

His initial thought was: _This is it?_

There was just one fighting space in the room—it was too small to fit any more. About twenty pokémon were scattered around the two in the arena. A few had Shifted, but most were still hatch forms, and even those who were bigger had soft muscles and blunt claws, compared to officers at least. In his early years at the police, Shadow remembered walking into the training grounds and feeling in awe of the pokémon around him. Not just in their size, but how they carried themselves: their poise, their efficiency.

But these pokémon? There was nothing scary about any of them.

Currently fighting were a nickit and growlithe. The growlithe did most of the attacking, though his fire-infused swings were haphazard at best. The nickit kept his distance, waiting for openings to use his dark Energy attacks. Shadow smirked at the memory of his own skill being at this level. It seemed impossibly far away now.

Still, the nickit was at least fighting to a strategy. A lot of 'mon at the police were too boneheaded to acquire one of those.

The strategy paid off, as the growlithe tired faster, left more gaps in his defences, and the nickit finished him off with a final dark ball to the midriff.

As they slapped paws and left the arena, Shadow was surprised to see the quilava he had headbutted step into their place, along with a marshtomp who might have been the biggest 'mon in the room.

The crowd around them suddenly hushed for the first time. The nickit stood up on his hind legs. "Alright, everyone!" he cried. "This is the fight you've been waiting for. Two of our strongest fighters, and a rivalry that just won't stop running… Sid against Musa! Get ready!"

Shadow pushed himself into a dark corner of the room, between two torches—the flaming woodblocks were the only mildly impressive feature of the place he had seen. He dimmed the colour of the nidorino's hide so it was practically invisible, then, from his hiding place, he watched the show unfold.

* * *

From the beginning of Fight Den, Sid had always won more fights than he'd lost. But in recent weeks his superiority had grown more and more pronounced, and now he had to pick his fights against the pokémon who would actually give him a challenge. There weren't many of those.

Aster Ivysaur was supremely skilled with his vines, but one blast from Sid's flames and he was almost out. Aeris Espurr used psychic attacks in ways no one else could match, but Sid's resilience to them had grown, and he attacked too ferociously for Aeris to block consistently.

There was only one pokémon that he would class among the elites who he hadn't defeated yet: Musa Marshtomp. It was obvious why, as Musa had reminded him with glee. Sid's fire barely scalded his thick, rubbery skin; Musa's water attacks burned his own fur like it was molten lava; and Musa was stronger and simply harder to _move_ than anyone Sid had faced.

But if anything, those disadvantages just made Sid more determined. He _would_ triumph, even against all odds. He was the strongest pokémon in Fight Den, and tonight he would prove it.

" _It's funny," Raskin had remarked to him a few days ago. "I don't think of you as a very competitive guy. Except maybe at beer pong. But you've really gotten into fighting."_

 _Sid laughed. "I… just love it, Rasky," he said. "If there's one thing in life that I want to perfect right now, it's fighting." He grinned, giving the nickit a nudge. "Fortunately, that's about the only thing we_ can _do right now."_

Musa suddenly charged forwards and spat a jet of water at Sid. He leapt away just in time, the water splashing the crowd behind him instead. Musa had almost caught him by surprise. _But now he'll be vulnerable._

Sid leapt back up, flared his fire sacs and lunged at Musa. The marshtomp took the tackle full in the chest with a grunt. He barely moved an inch. Sid followed up with a fiery punch, which Musa blocked with an arm. While the quilava was unbalanced, Musa fired a globule of thick mud into his face.

"AGHHH!" Sid cried. The _only_ thing he hated more than a water attack was Musa's mud shots. Mew knows where the stuff even _came_ from—Sid would never look at Musa's species in the same way again. It stung his fur, stuck to him like wet glue, and stank worse than Tyler had three weeks ago. He cleared enough of it from his face to be able to see, tried to shut out the stinging, and went in for another attack.

The fight dragged on, as the two exchanged attacks but couldn't land decisive blows. Sid felt his limbs grow heavier, his reactions slow, but he knew that Musa was fighting the same battle. Finally, he managed to tackle Musa to the ground. He charged in to follow-up, but the marshtomp gave him a desperate, four-limbed shove before he could, almost throwing _him_ out of the arena.

Then Musa followed up, tackling Sid hard when he was off-balance and firing a water jet into his face. Sid managed to push him backwards, creating a gap between them in the ring.

The quilava wobbled on his four feet. If he tried standing on two, he would fall straight back down. His fur was soaking and stinging from the wet mud that caked it. His ears rang from how many times he and Musa had collided. As water dripped down into his eyes, even his vision was failing.

 _But I can't give in,_ he told himself. _I_ am _the strongest fighter. This is who I am. Who I'm meant to be!_

He searched for every last bit of fire left in his body. When he had gathered all that he could, he gritted his teeth and pushed it into his fire sacs, bursting them alight once more.

He expected that to tire him all over again, but something strange happened instead. The nexus of fire energy he had just exhausted suddenly didn't seem exhausted at all. There was more of it within him—a lot more.

 _Where did this come from?_ He was used to finding an extra reserve of energy—they called him 'Second-Wind Sid' for a reason—but this was something greater. The fire swelled within him, growing every second, begging to be released.

Sid looked up at Musa. The marshtomp had just raised himself back to full height, but looked weak and vulnerable. Sid knew that this was his chance, maybe the best he'd ever get. Mew was aligning the stars for him.

He started moving, concentrating on channelling this new energy. The moment he lunged at Musa, fire exploded around his body. He couldn't see a thing through it, couldn't hear, couldn't even feel if his attack had landed.

None of that mattered though, because he realised suddenly exactly what was happening. It hadn't been so explosive the first time, all those years ago, but he recognised the feelings and embraced them.

His torso almost doubled in size; limbs bulged with new muscle; fire sacs merged around his neck. His teeth grew sharper, eyes narrowed, and fur thickened. Finally, the haze that had surrounded him—it couldn't be fire, he realised now—faded away.

His first thought was Musa. The marshtomp was on the floor, outside of the arena, being held up by two others. He looked small. _Everyone_ looked small. They were all looking up at him with wide eyes and open mouths.

"The winner…" Sid swivelled around as Raskin's voice failed him. The nickit's eyes lit up when they met his. "The winner is Sid! And more importantly, he's the first ever Fight Den pokémon to Shift!"

All of the rules about keeping noise down in the basement were forgotten. With a joyous roar, every pokémon Sid could see ran towards him, jumping and tackling him like he was an athletics champion. When their weight pushed him over, they piled on top of him on the ground.

When Sid was at last given a moment's respite, he looked immediately for Raskin. The nickit was seemingly the only pokémon who hadn't moved from his spot. He had tears in his eyes, and seeing that almost had the same effect on Sid.

"I didn't know quilava even had another form," Raskin said.

Sid laughed, then cleared his throat. Mew, even his laughter was at a lower pitch. "I never thought it was worth talking about before," he said.

"Look at you," Raskin said, shaking his head. " _Look_ at you. God… imagine how much food I'll have to carry now…"

Emotion overcame Sid. He practically swept the nickit into his paws. "This only happened because of you, Rasky," he sniffed. "Without your idea, Fight Den would never have been born. It's… it's made me happier than I thought I would ever be."

"That's very kind of you," Raskin chuckled. "But you're the one who's made Fight Den their own. You're an inspiration to these pokémon."

When Sid broke off their hug, Lyco had appeared in front of him. Even she was smiling.

"Congratulations," she said. "You deserve this."

"Oh, come here," Sid said, and wrapped his arms around her before she could wriggle away. Raskin was laughing hysterically at the sight of them.

Sid was far too distracted in that moment to notice a flicker of moment by the torches next to the entrance. But, if he _had_ looked, he would have seen a nidorino dart up the stairs, his face expressionless, as if he had never been there at all.


End file.
